BR  121  .W35  1897 
Watson,  John,  1847-1939. 
Christianity  and  idealism 


PUBLICATIONS   OF   THE  PHILOSOPHICAL   UNION   OF   THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

EDITED  BY 

G.  H.  HOWISON,  LL.D. 

MILLS   PROFESSOR   OF   INTELLECTUAL   AND    MORAL   PHILOSOPHY 
AND   CIVIL   POLITY 


VOLUME    II 


CHRISTIANITY   AND    IDEALISM 


•J^^y^ 


Christianity  and  Idealism 


The  Christian  Ideal  of  Life  in  its  Relations 

TO  THE  Greek  and  Jewish  Ideals  and 

TO  Modern  Philosophy 


BY 

/ 

JOHN   WATSON,    LL.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY   IN  QUEEN'S  UNIVERSITY 
KINGSTON.  CANADA 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:   MACMILLAN   &  CO.,  LTD. 
1897 

Ail  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1896, 
By  the  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


TCorfajDotJ  ^rcss 

J.  S.  CusliiiiK  &  Co.      Berwick  &  Smith 

Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Note  by  the  Editor vii 


Introductory  Preface 


XXI 


Part  I 

THE    CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE  IN  RELATION   TO 
THE    GREEK  AND  JE  WISH  IDEALS 

CHAPTER   I 
Historical  Connexion  of  Morality  and  Religion      .        .        i 

CHAPTER   n 
The  Greek  Ideal 23 

CHAPTER  III 
The  Jewish  Ideal 45 

CHAPTER   IV 
The  Christian  Ideal 60 

CHAPTER    V 
Medi^.val  Christianity no 

V 


yi  CONTENTS 


Part  II 


MODERN  IDEALISM  IN  ITS  RELATION   TO    THE 
CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

CHAPTER  VI 

PAGE 

General  Statement  and  Defence  of  Idealism     .        .        .121 


CHAPTER  VII 

Idealism    in    relation    to   Agnosticism  and   the    Special 

Sciences ^53 


CHAPTER  VIII 
Idealism  and  Christianity 192 


NOTE    BY   THE    EDITOR 

The  present  volume,  though  the  first  to 
come  from  the  press,  is  in  its  proper  order 
the  second  in  a  series  of  pubHcations  projected 
by  the  Philosophical  Union  of  the  University 
of  California.  The  first  volume,  entitled  The 
Conception  of  God,  by  Professor  Royce  of 
Harvard  University  and  a  number  of  his  critics, 
has  been  thrown  out  of  its  natural  place  by 
the  stress  of  circumstances,  but  will  presently 
be  issued,  and  in  due  time  will  be  followed  by 
others  from  various  writers  of  philosophical 
weight.  Each  volume  in  the  series  will  in  a 
manner  represent  the  culmination  of  a  group 
of  studies  prosecuted  by  the  Union,  usually 
during  an  academic  year ;  it  will  consist, 
mainly,  of  the  contribution  made  to  those 
studies  by  some  thinker  of  note  whose  pre- 
vious writings  have  formed  the  nucleus  of 
the  year's  work,  and  \\\\o  comes  at   the   invi- 


viii  NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR 

tation    of    the    Union    to    take   in   person    the 
chief  and  concluding  part  in  the  work. 

The  society  whose  pursuits  are  to  result 
in  these  publications  contains  members  of 
nearly  every  shade  of  current  philosophical 
opinion:  the  positivist,  the  agnostic,  the  un- 
settled inquirer,  all  have  their  free  expression 
and  hearing  in  it,  as  well  as  the  idealist  of 
nearly  every  type.  It  is  true,  however,  that 
the  dominant  tone  of  the  Union  is  affirma- 
tive and  idealistic.  The  decided  majority  of 
its  members  are  animated  by  a  conviction  that 
human  thouo;ht  is  able  to  solve  the  riddle 
of  life  positively ;  to  solve  it  in  accord  with 
the  ideal  hopes  and  interests  of  human 
nature.  TJiey  are  convinced  that,  for  better 
or  worse,  enlightened  mankind  has  in  matters 
of  belief  taken  a  final  leave  of  mere  tradi- 
tion and  of  blank  authority, — of  miraculism 
in  every  form.  It  is  accordingly  clear  to 
them  that  the  only  safety  for  human  prac- 
tice henceforth,  the  practice  of  each  or  the 
practice  of  all,  lies  in  founding  it  on  a  phil- 
osophic criticism  that  shall  be  luminous,  un- 
relenting, penetrating  to  the  bottom,  and  that 


Erratum. 
Page  viii,  line  lo  from  bottom,  for  "They"  read  "  Many.' 


NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR  ix 

yet,  just  because  of  this  unsparing  thorough- 
ness, will  affirm  the  reality  of  all  those  moral 
beliefs  and  religious  hopes  on  which  the 
achievements  of  western  civilisation  have 
hitherto  rested,  and  by  the  undermining  of 
which  the  stability  of  society  now  threatens 
to  give  way. 

A  certain  thread  of  continuity,  coming 
from  this  affirmative  aim,  is  discernible  in 
the  writings  that  form  the  first  two  volumes 
in  the  proposed  series.  Indeed,  this  is  obvi- 
ous from  their  titles  —  The  Conception  of 
God  and  Christianity  and  Idealism.  Were 
one  to  say  that  a  logical  march  seems  mani- 
fest here,  as  if  there  were  an  advance  from 
the  question  of  Theism  in  general  to  the 
more  specific  question  of  Christian  Theism, 
the  statement  would  not  be  incorrect.  Such 
a  line  in  the  discussion,  such  an  advance  in 
it  along  the  historical  course  of  religious  be- 
lief, has  actually  been  in  mind.  It  corre- 
sponds, too,  to  the  course  of  attack  upon 
the  ideals  of  past  culture  which  the  negative 
philosophical  criticism  in  our  century  has 
taken.     That    attack    has    accustomed    us    to 


X  NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR 

the  repeated  sceptical  questions :  Is  there 
any  proof  that  there  is  even  a  God  ?  Is 
there  any,  at  all  events,  that  Christianity  is 
true  ?  Are  we  any  longer  Theists,  even  ? 
In  any  case,  are  we  any  longer  Christians  ? 
A  philosophical  procedure  aiming  to  affirm 
the  reality  of  the  ideal  elements  in  our 
achieved  civilisation  would  naturally  follow 
the  path  of  these  questions,  and,  by  a  criti- 
cal appreciation  at  once  of  their  supports 
and  of  their  limits,  would  pass  to  the  justi- 
fication of  a  rational  Theism,  and  onward  to 
that  of  a  rational  Christianity. 

The  present  volume  thus  has  for  its  theme 
the  interdependence  of  Christianity  and  Ideal- 
ism ;  of  Christianity  regarded,  not  as  histori- 
cal theology,  but  as  an  ideal  of  conduct,  and 
Idealism  so  stated  as  to  become,  in  the 
author's  conviction,  completely  self-consistent, 
and  thus  expressive  of  a  reason  completely 
self-critical.  Professor  Watson  argues,  tacitly, 
that  Christianity  and  Idealism,  when  each  is 
duly  understood,  lend  each  other  a  stable 
support.  From  this  point  of  view,  no  doubt, 
a    large    part    of     historical    theology    called 


NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR  xi 

Christian  will  fall  away,  even  of  that  which 
has  been  regarded  as  of  the  essence  of 
Christianity,  and  Christianity  will  be  seen  as 
in  its  truth  the  new  but  abiding  principle 
of  personal  and  social  action  that  marked  a 
fresh  and  higher  stage  in  human  develop- 
ment, and  that  amid  all  foreign  surroundings 
or  accretions  has  ever  since  been  the  real 
prime  mover  in  the  progress  of  civilisation. 
On  the  other  hand,  Idealism,  responding  to 
a  like  logic,  will  assume  the  form  proper  to 
it  as  simply  the  philosophical  expression 
of  whatever  is  most  characteristic  of  man 
in  his  animation  by  rational  ideals.  In  this 
common  light  each  will  prove  the  other  true; 
for  each  will  be  seen  to  be  but  a  different 
expression  of  the  same  indivisibly  threefold 
Fact  —  God,  human  responsible  freedom,  and 
human  immortality.  Idealism  will  prove  to 
be  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  principle 
of  morality  and  religion  on  the  one  hand, 
the  principle  of  advancing  history  on  the 
other,  in  their  comprehended  fulfilment ; 
while  Christianity,  now  discerned  in  its 
essence,    distino-uished     from     its     accidental 


xii  NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR 

embodiments  and  encumbrances,  will  be 
seen  to  be  that  in  germ  which  Idealism  is 
in  full  issue.  Both  get  in  this  way  the  vast 
and  impressive  sanction  that  attaches  to 
everything  structural  in  the  growth  of  his- 
tory. Neither  can  any  longer  be  viewed  as 
an  accident  or  a  caprice,  but  both  are  dis- 
covered to  be  intrinsic  in  things  as  things 
historically  are ;  both  to  be  aspects  of  that 
Reason  which  is  the  reality  of  the  real,  both 
constitutive  in  the  Reality  which  is  rational 
through  and  through.  Necessary  to  this 
massive  style  of  proof,  would  be  an  exhibi- 
tion of  Christianity  in  its  historical  develop- 
ment out  of  and  above  earlier  religions, 
especially  Judaism  and  Hellenism,  and  an 
exposition  of  Idealism  as  rising  out  of  and 
over  lower  philosophies,  surmounting  in  logi- 
cally natural  sequence  Empiricism,  Positiv- 
ism, Agnosticism,  and  the  successive  inchoate 
or  arrested  forms  of  its  own  doctrine.  To 
this  course  of  argument  the  plan  of  the 
present  work,  as  set  forth  in  its  successive 
parts  and  their  chapters,  manifestly  corre- 
sponds. 


NOTE  BY  THE  EDTTOR  xiii 

The  book  forms  a  natural  sequel  to  its 
author's  previous  work  Conitc,  Mill,  and  Spen- 
cer, and,  though  in  its  second  part  beginning 
like  that  with  a  polemic  against  the  sceptical 
and  agnostic  factors  in  the  thinking  of  these 
writers  and  of  Kant,  seeks  to  bring  into  view 
the  deep  affirmative  implication,  the  larger 
Idealism,  that  forms  the  silent  presupposition 
of  their  reasoning,  however  little  suspected  by 
them.  Directed  upon  the  negative  thought 
so  prevalent  in  our  century,  both  works  aim 
to  re-establish  the  human  values  invaded  by 
it,  not  by  thrusting  it  out  as  worthless, 
but  through  supplementing  it  by  the  larger 
affirmation  which  at  once  gives  to  the  nega- 
tive its  relative  justification,  its  function  in 
the  reasoned  total  truth,  and  yet  exposes 
the  one-sidedness  that  would  recognise  it 
exclusively.  It  was  in  view  of  this  perti- 
nence to  the  mental  situation  of  the  times, 
that  the  Union  made  the  Comte,  Mill,  and 
Spencer  the  basis  of  its  studies  for  the  year 
1895-96,  submitted  the  criticism  advanced  in 
the  book  to  a  counter-criticism  by  such  of  its 
members  as  might  fairly  lay  claim  to   expert 


xiv  NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR 

knowledge  in  the  various  sciences  concerned 
—  mathematics,  physics,  biology,  the  theory  of 
evolution,  the  history  of  philosophy — and 
invited  the  author  to  visit  the  Union  from 
his  distant  home,  to  complete  his  part  of  the 
discussion  in  a  series  of  lectures.  The  result 
is  the  book  before  us. 

The  reader,  however,  would  be  insecure  in 
assuming  that  because  the  new  work  is  issued 
at  the  instance  of  the  Union,  the  philosophy 
set  forth  in  it  is  regarded  by  the  members  as 
a  final  solution  of  the  grave  questions  agitat- 
ing our  times.  Certainly,  the  most  active 
and  influential  of  them  are  in  strong  sym- 
pathy with  the  general  position  of  its  author: 
belief  in  our  responsible  freedom,  in  our  im- 
mortality, and  in  God,  they  regard  as  lying  at 
the  foundation  of  civilised  society,  and  they 
think  its  defence  is  only  achievable  through 
some  form  of  Idealism.  But  many  of  them, 
and  among  these  the  present  writer,  are  im- 
pressed with  the  difficulty  under  which  all 
philosophy  labours  since  Kant,  in  the  effort  to 
reach  the  complete  ideal  desired  —  the  insepa- 
rably   correlated    truths    of    God,  real    human 


NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR  XV 

freedom,  and  immortality  genuinely  personal. 
The  clue  to  this  threefold  union  of  truths  is 
fastened  in  human  free-agency,  comprehended 
as  meaning  self-activity  profoundly  inward  and 
unqualifiedly  real ;  and  the  difficulty  lies  in 
seeing  how  the  conception  of  an  immanent 
God,  joined  with  the  seeming  impossibility  of 
proving  any  other  God  on  Kantian  principles 
of  knowledge,  can  be  consistent  with  such 
freedom.  Those  of  us  who  are  convinced  of 
this  inconsistency  are  therefore  looking  for  an- 
other way  with  Idealism  ;  we  believe  that  the 
time  has  perhaps  arrived  when  this  other  way 
can  be  opened,  and  a  new  philosophical  de- 
parture begun.  This  is  not  the  place,  of 
course,  to  set  forth  its  method ;  let  the  mere 
hint  suffice,  that,  for  its  starting-point,  w^e  shall 
look  to  a  renewed  criticism  of  Kant,  addressed 
primarily  to  closing  the  gap  which  he  left 
between  the  Practical  and  the  Theoretical 
Reason,  and  to  establishing  an  effective  instead 
of  a  merely  nominal  primacy  of  the  former 
over  the  latter:  it  would  be  shown,  namely, 
that  the  moral  and  rcliijious  consciousness, 
with  its  postulate  of  a  world  of  Persons,  really 


xvi  NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR 

free,  enters  as  a  constitutive  condition  into 
the  possibility  of  the  world  of  sense-percep- 
tion itself,  and  is  thus  the  finally  determining 
factor  in  the  logic  of  nature  and  of  predictive 
natural  science.  In  this  way  the  world  of  the 
moral  and  religious  consciousness  would  be 
embraced  in  the  complete  and  genuine  world 
of  science ;  knowledge  directed  upon  nature 
would  be  shown  to  be  only  one  special  func- 
tion of  intelligence,  and  the  world  of  absolute 
realities  would  be  recovered  for  the  intellect. 
To  those  who  may  feel  that  the  reconcilia- 
tion of  human  freedom  with  the  literal  im- 
manence of  the  Divine  Being  is  more  than 
human  wit  can  compass,  it  may  be  well  to 
point  out  that  this  is  the  only  conception  of 
God  left  possible  by  Kant  for  minds  who 
accept  his  Analytic^^\\\\  its  necessary  "sche- 
matism "  of  the  Categories,  limiting  know- 
ledge to  the  range  of  possible  experience, 
and  w^ho  still  would  lay  hold  on  God  by 
knowledge  rather  than  by  unsupported  faith. 
If  the  tenet  of  Kant  is  to  stand,  that  no  know- 
ledge is  possible  unless  the  knowing  subject 
and    the    known    object    fall    within    one    and 


NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR  xvii 

the  same  self-consciousness,  then  the  God 
of  knowledge  must  be  this  immanent  God, 
and  human  freedom  must  make  the  best 
of  it.  But  will  the  tenet  stand  ?  —  must 
it  stand  ?  It  is  in  direct  contradiction  with 
that  other  tenet,  Kant's  very  starting-point : 
That  a  perceptive  consciousness  implies,  un- 
mistakably, some  reality  other  than  its  own. 
Which  of  the  two  tenets  is  to  reign  and  to 
endure?  To  us  of  the  Union  who  look  for 
the  new  way  with  Idealism,'  these  are  the 
signal  questions  for  the  future  of  philosophy. 
To  minds  at  a  loss  to  find  a  God  knowable 
and  yet  compatible  with  their  freedom,  or, 
in  other  terms,  with  their  genuine  reality, 
our  word  would  be :  Return  to  Kant's  criti- 
cal starting-point,  follow  his  critical  method 
by  interpreting  the  necessary  transcendent 
object  in  the  light  of  Practical  Reason,  but 
do  this  with  critical  consistency;  at  one 
stroke,  give  his  foundation-tenet  a  logical 
footing  and  refute  his  opposing  tenet,  by 
showing  that  his  world  of  the  Practical  Rea- 
son, the  world  of  real  Persons,  is  a  condition 
of    the   possibility  of    perception  itself,  if    this 


xviii  NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR 

is  to  be  objective  and  not  a  mere  experience 
—  a  mere  state  of  the  particular  subject. 
There  is  no  conceivable  criterion  by  which 
an  experience  could  be  discriminated  as  ob- 
jective, except  the  consenting  judgment  of  a 
total  society  of  minds. 

But,  differ  as  they  may  from  the  author, 
if  indeed  they  do  differ,  the  members  of  the 
Union  are  happy  in  being  the  agents  of 
giving  to  the  world  a  writing  of  his  that 
has  the  solid  philosophical  worth  which  they 
believe  the  present  work  possesses.  After 
all,  and  in  these  times  of  fundamental  doubt 
especially,  one  of  the  greatest  philosophical 
services  is  to  rouse  men  to  a  thoroughly 
critical  search  into  the  whole  course  of  seri- 
ous thought  and  its  meaning,  and  to  do 
this  in  the  only  effective  way  —  by  exhibit- 
inor  the  encourai>in2:  truth  that  it  has  a 
meaning:,  that  its  earnest  efforts  cannot  end 
in  mere  scepticism,  indifference,  or  despair. 
We  offer  this  book  to  the  reader,  confi- 
dent of  the  secure  wisdom  of  its  author's 
sentence  :  "  The  failures  of  successive  philoso- 
phies   are    not    in    any    sense    absolute ;     with 


NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR  xix 

each  step  in  advance,  the  problem  becomes 
clearer  and  more  easy  of  solution."  We 
believe,  too,  that  the  work  has  a  live  rela- 
tion to  the  questions  most  urgent  just  now. 
These  amount  to  no  less  than  this :  either 
the  entire  abandonment  of  the  moral  and  re- 
ligious conceptions  upon  which  the  culture  of 
our  western  nations  has  been  bred,  or  else 
tlie  preservation  of  their  living  heart  despite 
the  free  stripping  away  of  the  coverings  in 
which  they  have  been  protected  and  nour- 
ished. It  is  all-important  that  belief  in  this 
living  heart  of  Christianity  shall  be  rationally 
preserved,  and  that  in  the  process  of  casting 
off  its  foreign  and  outworn  integuments  its 
vital  substance  shall  neither  be  lost,  impaired, 
nor  adulterated.  To  repeat  the  language  of 
the  lamented  author  of  Literature  and  Docrnia, 
"  An  inevitable  revolution,  of  which  we  all 
recognise  the  beginnings  and  the  signs,  but 
which  has  already  spread,  perhaps,  farther 
than  most  of  us  think,  is  befalling  the  re- 
ligion in  which  we  have  been  brought  up"; 
and,  amid  its  course,  the  greatest  need  of 
the   times   is   a  deep    and    accurate    definition 


XX  NOTE  BY  THE  EDITOR 

of  Christianity  as  it  really  is,  when  its  belief  is 
stated  in  the  highest  and  simplest  terms,  pure 
yet  sufficing.  For  lack  of  this,  Arnold's  own 
effort  to  take  advantage  of  the  tide  in  this 
religious  revolution  proved  to  be  too  great 
a  yielding  to  the  prevailing  current  of  scep- 
ticism;  the  distinction  between  his  "Eternal, 
not  ourselves,  that  makes  for  righteousness" 
and  the  "Unknowable"  of  the  agnostic  be- 
came so  attenuated  as  to  be  without  practical 
significance,  and  in  abandoning  the  person- 
ality, sacrificed  the  vital  quality  of  God.  The 
present  work,  by  its  comprehensive  yet  lumi- 
nous interpretation  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus, 
and  its  organic  connecting  of  this  with  the 
highest  philosophic  insights,  we  believe  goes 
far  toward  settling  the  desired  definition  as 
it  is.  For  this  reason,  we  feel  that  it  will 
meet  a  profoundly  real  want  in  all  earnest 
and  quickened  minds,  and  we  send  it  forth 
with  a  large  and  hopeful  confidence. 

G.    H.    HOWISON. 

University  of  California,  Berkeley, 
October  27,  1896. 


INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

The  present  work  has  grown  out  of  lect- 
ures recently  delivered  before  the  Philosophi- 
cal Union  of  the  University  of  California. 
What  is  called  Part  I.  is  the  expansion  of  a 
lecture  on  "  The  Greek  and  Christian  Ideals 
of  Life,"  and  the  remainder  contains  the  sub- 
stance of  two  lectures  in  defence  of  Idealism, 
with  a  good  deal  of  additional  matter. 

The  historical  matter  of  the  first  part  does 
not  pretend  to  be  a  complete  presentation  of 
the  development  of  religion.  It  was  my  first 
intention  to  attempt  such  a  presentation,  but 
I  soon  found  that  it  was  impossible  to  com- 
press so  abundant  a  material  within  the  limits 
assigned  to  me,  and  I  have  therefore  con- 
fined myself  to  a  statement  of  the  general 
course  of  religious  development,  with  a  more 
particular  consideration  of  the  Greek  and 
Jewish    ideals   of   life,  as    compared   with    the 


xxii  INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

Christian.  In  treating  of  these  topics,  I  have 
avoided  all  polemical  discussion,  aiming  rather 
to  give  the  results  of  many  years  of  reading 
and  reflection,  than  to  occupy  space  with  a 
consideration  of  conflicting  views.  The  chap- 
ter on  the  Christian  Ideal  is  based  upon  a 
study  of  the  synoptic  gospels,  as  read  in  the 
light  of  modern  historical  and  philosophical 
criticism.  Here,  above  all,  it  seemed  advisable 
to  avoid  as  far  as  possible  all  purely  doc- 
trinal topics,  concentrating  attention  entirely 
upon  the  conception  of  life  which  may  be,  as 
I  think,  constructed  from  the  sayings  of  Jesus 
himself.  I  am  by  no  means  indifferent  to  the 
development  by  theologians  of  the  fundamental 
ideas  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  but  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  wonderful  power  and 
persuasiveness  of  those  ideas  is  most  apparent 
when  they  are  exhibited  in  their  naked  purity. 
It  seems  almost  necessary  to  say  a  word 
or  two  upon  the  use  of  the  term  "  Idealism." 
The  objection  has  been  raised  that  no  school 
of  thought  has  an  exclusive  right  to  the  title. 
In  answer  to  this  objection  perhaps  I  can- 
not   do    better    than    try    to    explain    why    I 


INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE  xxiii 

think  the  term  "  IdeaHsm "  may  be  fairly 
employed  to  designate  the  general  theory 
which  is  here  advocated. 

I  presume  it  will  be  admitted  that  the 
originator  of  the  philosophical  doctrine  of 
Idealism  was  Plato,  and  that  Plato  conceived 
of  the  first  principle  of  all  things  as  reason 
(N0D9),  also  maintaining  that  it  is  in  virtue  of 
reason,  as  distinguished  from  sensible  percep- 
tion, that  man  obtains  a  knowledge  of  that 
principle.  Now,  modern  Idealism,  as  I  under- 
stand it,  agrees  with  Plato  on  these  two 
points,  and  therefore  its  claim  to  the  name 
does  not  seem  either  arrogant  or  unreason- 
able. No  system  has  a  right  to  call  itself 
"  idealistic,"  in  the  Platonic  sense,  which  does 
not  in  some  form  accept  the  doctrine  of 
the  rationality  and  knowability  of  the  real. 
Applying  this  test,  we  must  exclude  Agnosti- 
cism, which  denies  that  we  can  know  the 
real  as  it  is  in  itself;  Scepticism,  which  re- 
fuses to  admit  that  we  can  make  any  abso- 
lute affirmation  whatever,  either  positive  or 
negative ;  and  Sensationalism  or  Empiricism, 
which   finds    in   the   sensible   and    its   custom- 


xxiv  INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

ary  modes  of  conjunction  the  only  knovvable 
world.  To  call  by  the  name  of  Idealism,  as 
is  sometimes  done,  a  doctrine  which  reduces 
all  knowable  reality  to  individual  states  or 
feelings,  is  surely  an  unwarrantable  use  of 
the  term. 

If  it  is  said  that,  interpreted  in  the  wide 
sense  here  given  to  it.  Idealism  must  include 
systems  differing  so  greatly  as  those  of  Des- 
cartes and  Hegel,  or  of  Spinoza  and  Lotze, 
I  entirely  agree.  The  systems  of  Descartes, 
Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  Kant,  Fichte,  Schelling, 
Heofel,  and  Lotze  all  seem  to  me  to  be  forms 
of  Idealism,  and  the  only  question  is  how 
far  any  of  them  can  claim  to  be  true  to  the 
principle  that  "  the  real  is  rational."  The 
test,  therefore,  of  an  idealistic  philosophy  is 
its  ability  to  provide  a  system  of  ideas  which 
shall  best  harmonise  with  the  principle  upon 
which  Idealism  is  based ;  or,  rather,  the  suc- 
cess of  an  idealistic  philosophy  must  consist 
in  its  ability  to  prove  that  "  the  real  is 
rational,"  and  that  man  is  capable  of  knowing 
it  to  be  rational.  I  am  very  far  from  affirm- 
ing   that    the   hurried   sketch   of    an   idealistic 


INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE  xxv 

philosophy  here  presented  fulfils  that  demand : 
all  that  is  attempted  is  to  expose  the  irrele- 
vancy of  certain  objections  which  have  been 
made  from  a  misunderstanding  of  what  Ideal- 
ism affirms,  and  to  indicate  the  main  line  of 
thought  which  it  must  follow,  and  the  main 
conclusions  to  which  it  leads. 

It  may  help  to  indicate  the  points  in  which 
Idealism,  as  here  presented,  differs  from  some 
of  the  great  historical  forms  which  it  has 
assumed,  if  I  state  wherein  these  seem  to  be 
defective.  In  doing  so,  it  will  not  be  possi- 
ble to  enter  into  detail,  or  to  support  by  rea- 
soned proof  the  conclusions  to  which  I  have 
been  led.  I  shall  therefore  have  to  assume 
a  general  acquaintance  with  the  history  of 
philosophy  on  the  part  of  the  reader,  and  I 
beg  him  to  take  the  criticisms  which  I  shall 
make  simply  as  results,  the  evidence  for  which 
I  hope  to  give  in  detail  on  another  occasion. 

Plato  may  be  called  the  Father  of  Idealism, 
though,  no  doubt,  his  doctrine  was  a  develop- 
ment from  the  Idealism  implied  in  the  N0D9 
of  Anaxagoras,  and  still  more  clearly  in  the 
Socratic   view   of   universals.      How  far,  then, 


xxvi  INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

may  it  be  said  that  Plato  was  untrue  to  his 
central  idea  of  the  rationality  and  knowability 
of  the  real  ?  His  main  defect,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  was  in  virtually  opposing  the  real  to 
the  actual  or  so-called  "sensible."  This 
defect  is  obvious  in  his  theory,  or  one  of  his 
theories,  that  Art  consists  in  the  "  imitation  " 
of  ordinary  "  sensible "  actuality.  The  simi- 
lar defect  in  his  Philosophy  of  Religion  it 
will  not  be  necessary  to  exhibit  here,  as  I 
have  dealt  with  it  in  the  body  of  the  work; 
but  a  word  may  be  said  in  regard  to  his 
defective  Theory  of  Knowledge.  Just  as 
Plato  at  last  rejects  Art  on  the  ground  that 
it  only  represents  or  imitates  the  "  sensible," 
so  he  shows  a  decided  tendency  to  separate 
the  universal  from  the  particular.  He  does, 
indeed,  maintain  that  whatever  is  real  must 
be  self-active ;  but  in  separating  reason,  as 
it  exists  in  us,  from  sensible  perception,  he 
virtually  empties  reason  of  all  content,  and 
makes   its    objects    pure    abstractions. 

The  philosophy  of  Aristotle  is  beset  by 
similar  defects,  though  in  him  the  contrast 
of    the    real   or    ideal    and    the    actual    is    less 


INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE  xxvii 

rigid  and  is  more  obviously  in  process  of 
being  transcended.  Like  Plato,  he  starts 
from  the  "  mimetic "  theory  of  Art,  but  he 
is  led  to  make  assertions  which  are  contra- 
dictory of  his  starting-point.  Thus  he 
virtually  asserts  (i)  that  Art  is  such  an  in- 
terpretation of  the  actual  as  serves  to  bring 
out  its  deeper  meaning,  (2)  that  it  gives  rise 
to  a  feeling  of  self-harmony,  and  (3)  that  its 
object  is  spiritual  forces  in  their  deepest 
reality.  Yet,  since  he  never  abandoned  the 
view  that  Art  is  an  "  imitation "  of  the 
sensible,  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  attained  to 
a  self-consistent  theory.  The  reason  for  this 
discrepancy  comes  to  light  in  his  Philosophy 
of  Religion,  where  he  does  not  get  beyond 
the  idea  of  God  as  a  self-centred  Being,  and 
is  therefore  forced  to  conceive  of  the  world 
as  related  to  God  in  an  external  or  arbitrary 
way.  Similarly,  in  his  Theory  of  Knowledge, 
he  shrinks  from  the  admission  that  the  actual 
is  rational.  There  is  always  in  things,  as  he 
thinks,  a  recalcitrant  element  or  "  matter," 
which  is  the  source  of  "contingency"  or 
"  chance."       It     is     not     merely    that    human 


xxvill  INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

knowledge  cannot  completely  comprehend 
the  actual,  but  the  actual  is  itself  imperfect, 
and  therefore  the  ideal  "  forms "  as  they 
exist  for  the  divine  reason,  being  entirely 
free  from  "  matter,"  are  essentially  different 
from  the  actual,  in  which  "  form "  is  always 
more  or  less  sunk  in  "  matter." 

When  W'C  pass  from  ancient  to  modern 
philosophy,  we  find  the  same  problem  of  the 
reconciliation  of  the  real  and  the  actual  con- 
fronting us ;  but  the  antagonism  seems  more 
difficult  of  solution,  because  the  contrast  of 
the  finite  and  the  infinite  has  been  sharpened 
by  the  explicit  claim  of  the  individual  to  ac- 
cept nothing  which  does  not  commend  itself 
to  his  reason. 

By  Descartes,  two  opposite  methods  are 
employed,  —  the  method  of  abstraction  and 
the  method  of  definition.  In  the  use  of  the 
former,  he  is  led  to  maintain  that  the  only 
permanent  or  unchanging  attribute  of  body 
is  geometrical  extension ;  in  employing  the 
latter,  he  assumes  that  there  are  a  number 
of  real  things,  each  having  a  definite  or 
limited    amount  of    extension.     Spinoza   turns 


INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE  xxix 

the  former  view  against  the  latter,  pointing 
out  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  idea  of  pure 
extension  which  entitles  us  to  conceive  of  it 
as  broken  up  into  parts.  There  can  there- 
fore, he  argues,  be  no  individual  bodies,  but 
only  a  single  substance  without  parts  or 
limits.  Leibnitz,  again,  agrees  with  Spinoza 
in  holding  that  pure  space  has  no  limits, 
but  the  inference  he  draws  is  that  space  is 
not  an  attribute  of  real  substance,  but  a  pure 
abstraction,  derived  from  our  experience  of 
the  order  which  obtains  among  the  confused 
objects  of  sense.  Thus  all  the  spatial  deter- 
minations of  things,  as  merely  confused  ideas, 
have  no  existence  from  the  point  of  view  of 
thought ;  a  view  which  converts  the  actual 
into  pure  illusion. 

To  Descartes  it  seemed  that  the  human 
mind  cannot  comprehend  the  ends  which  God 
must  be  supposed  to  have  in  creation,  and 
therefore  he  maintained  that  we  must  give 
up  the  vain  search  for  final  causes.  "  All 
God's  ends  are  hidden  in  the  inscrutable  abyss 
of  his  wisdom."  Descartes,  however,  tacitly 
assumed  that  there  are  such  ends,  if  only  we 


XXX  mTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

could  discover  them.  Such  a' doctrine  is  mani- 
festly self-contradictory,  and  therefore  Spinoza 
was  only  following  out  this  side  of  the  Car- 
tesian doctrine  to  its  logical  result  when  he 
denied  final  causes  altogether.  Leibnitz,  on 
the  other  hand,  refused  to  admit  that  human 
knowledge  is  limited  to  the  orderly  movements 
of  nature,  as  both  Descartes  and  Spinoza  as- 
sumed, and  therefore  he  maintained  that,  with- 
out the  idea  of  final  cause,  or  activity  directed 
towards  an  end,  we  cannot  explain  the  world 
at  all.  We  must  therefore  conceive  of  every 
real  being  or  "  monad  "  as  self-active  and  pur- 
posive. Each  "  monad "  is  ever  striving  to 
make  explicit  what  is  already  contained  ob- 
scurely in  it,  and  each  "  represents  "  the  whole 
world  from  its  own  point  of  view,  so  that  all 
"  monads,"  without  any  actual  connexion  with 
one  another,  harmonise  in  their  perceptions. 
Now  [a)  it  is  a  pure  assumption  that  there 
are  absolutely  independent  "monads,"  in  w^hich 
there  already  exists  obscurely  all  that  after- 
wards comes  to  more  or  less  clear  expression; 
an  assumption  which  has  no  better  warrant 
than  the  preconception  that  identity  is  incom- 


INTRODUCTORY  TREFACE  xxxi 

patible  with  development,  {b)  It  is  equally  an 
assumption  that  each  monad  "  represents  "  the 
world.  On  the  Leibnitzian  hypothesis  of 
purely  individual  beings,  each  shut  up  within 
itself,  there  can  be  no  way  of  proving  that 
there  is  any  world  to  "  represent."  The  only 
real  individuality,  as  I  should  maintain,  is  that 
of  a  beinQ[  which  knows  itself  because  it 
knows  other  beings,  {c)  When  he  comes  to 
explain  the  "  harmony "  of  the  monads  with 
one  another,  Leibnitz  has  to  fall  back  upon 
the  idea  of  the  selective  activity  of  the  divine 
will.  Out  of  all  the  possible  worlds  which 
lay  before  the  divine  mind,  that  was  chosen 
which  was  the  best  on  the  whole.  Here, 
therefore,  in  the  final  result  of  the  Leibnitz- 
ian philosophy,  we  see  the  fundamental  dis- 
crepancy which  vitiates  his  whole  system. 
The  actual  world  after  all  is  not  rational, 
but  only  as  rational  as  God  could  make  it ; 
a  theory  which  leaves  us  no  ground  for  in- 
ferring the  rationality  of  God  at  all,  but  on 
the  contrary  presupposes  an  absolute  limit 
in  the  divine  mind.  Thus  the  Idealism  of 
Leibnitz,  suggestive  as  it  is,  ultimately  breaks 


xxxii  INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

down  ill  contradiction.     Can  we,  then,  accept 
the  Critical  Idealism  of  Kant  ? 

I  cannot  do  more  here  than  indicate  the 
defects  in  the  philosophy  of  Kant  which 
prevent  us  from  regarding  it  as  final.  Its 
fundamental  imperfection  is  the  abstract  op- 
position of  the  empirical  and  the  ideal,  as  if 
the  former  were  not  implicitly  the  latter. 
This  opposition  meets  us  first  in  his  theory 
of  knowledge,  in  which  a  virtual  contrast  is 
drawn  between  what  is  knowable  and  what 
lies  beyond  the  boundaries  of  knowledge. 
Such  a  contrast  is  ultimately  unmeaning. 
The  only  reality  by  reference  to  which  we 
can  criticise  the  knowable  world  of  ordinary 
experience  is  a  reality  which  includes,  though 
it  further  elucidates,  that  world.  Failing  to 
recognise  this  truth,  the  philosophy  of  Kant 
is  vexed  by  the  perpetual  recurrence  of  self- 
contradiction  in  some  new  form,  a  self-con- 
tradiction which  is  never  finally  transcended, 
(i)  In  the  Esthetic,  Kant  adopts  the  com- 
promise, that  space  and  time  belong  to  the 
subject,  while  individual  things  in  space  and 
time  are  relative  to  an  unknown  object.     But, 


INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE  xxxiii 

as  these  individuals  must  enter  into  know- 
ledge, he  is  compelled  to  regard  the  unknown 
object  as  a  mere  blank,  and  such  an  object 
cannot  be  contrasted  with  anything;  it  is,  in 
fact,  merely  the  known  w^orld  stripped  of  its 
determinateness  and  hypostatised.  Kant  is 
here  really  criticising  the  known  world  by  an 
abstract  phase  of  itself,  and  pronouncing  the 
former  to  be  lower  instead  of  higher  than 
the  latter.  The  pure  object  can  only  be 
regarded  as  higher  than  the  known  world, 
in  so  far  as  the  spatial  and  temporal  world 
is  seen  to  be  a  lower  form  of  the  knowable 
world.  In  this  sense,  no  doubt,  we  may  say 
that  the  undefined  object,  or  thing  in  itself, 
indicates  the  world  as  it  exists  in  idea,  i.e. 
the  world  as  completely  determined.  (2)  In 
the  Analytic,  Kant  takes  another  step  in  the 
process  by  which  he  gives  a  higher  meaning 
to  the  thing  in  itself.  The  luliolc  of  the 
knowable  world  is  now  shown  to  involve  the 
unifying  activity  of  the  knowing  subject, 
though  with  the  reservation  that  the  object 
is  conceived  as  the  source  of  the  undefined 
"  manifold    of   sense."     But,  in   truth,  there  is 


xxxiv  INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

no  undefined  "  manifold  "  for  knowledge^  and 
hence  the  thing  in  itself  is,  even  more  pal- 
pably than  before,  a  magiii  7iominis  umbra. 
(3)  This  is  partly  recognised  by  Kant  him- 
self when  he  goes  on  to  consider  the  Un- 
conditioned in  its  three  forms,  —  the  soul, 
the  world,  and  God.  (a)  His  criticism  of 
Rational  Psychology  is  virtually  a  recognition 
of  the  truth,  that  the  pure  or  unrelated  sub- 
ject is  a  mere  fiction  of  abstraction.  Yet  he 
does  not  draw  the  proper  inference,  that  the 
real  subject  exists  only  in  and  through  its 
relations  to  the  object.  Such  a  subject  is 
not  mechanically  determinable,  being  self- 
conscious  and  self-active,  but  it  does  not 
and  could  not  exist,  were  not  the  system  of 
nature  what  it  is.  (b)  Kant's  criticism  of 
Rational  Cosmology  is  valid,  so  far  as  it 
points  out  that  the  reflective  understanding 
seeks  to  affirm  one  of  two  related  terms  as 
if  they  were  mutually  exclusive ;  but  Kant 
does  not  see  that  the  reconciliation  of  these 
opposites  is  possible  without  recourse  being 
had  to  the  unknowable  region  of  "  noumena." 
{c)    The    criticism    of    Rational     Theology    is 


INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE  xxxv 

valid  as  against  the  dualistic  separation  of 
being  and  thought,  the  world  and  God ;  but 
Kant's  own  solution  is  inadequate,  because 
he  regards  these  oppositions  as  holding  ab- 
solutely within  the  sphere  of  the  knowable, 
whereas  they  are  really  oppositions  which 
carry  their  own  refutation  with  them. 

When  he  passes  from  the  Theoretical  to 
the  Practical  Reason,  Kant  at  last  recognises 
that  the  self-conscious  subject  is  synthetic  or 
productive ;  in  other  words,  that  here  the 
real  object  is  not  opposed  to  the  subject  as 
something  unintelligible,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
is  bound  up  with  the  very  nature  of  the 
subject.  But  the  shadow  of  the  "  thing  in 
itself"  still  haunts  him,  and  therefore  he  con- 
ceives this  objective  world  as  merely  an 
ideal  which  demands  realisation,  but  which 
can  never  be  realised.  The  way  out  of  this 
difficulty  is  to  recognise  that  the  ideal  is  the 
real:  that  morality  is  not  a  mere  ''beyond," 
but  is  actually  realised  objectively  in  human 
institutions,  which  themselves  have  perma- 
nence only  as  they  are  in  harmony  with  the 
eternal  nature  of  the  world,  or,  in  other 
words,  with  the  nature  of  God. 


xxxvi  INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

In  the  Critique  of  Judgnie7it  Kant  makes 
a  final  effort  to  overcome  the  dualism  with 
which  he  started.  In  aesthetic  feeling  he 
finds  a  sort  of  unconscious  testimony  to  the 
unity  of  the  phenomenal  and  the  real,  and  in 
organised  beings  he  meets  with  a  phase  of 
things  which  refuses  to  come  under  the  head 
either  of  the  phenomenal  or  the  noumenal. 
Thus,  "  as  by  a  side  gesture,"  Kant  points 
beyond  the  abstractions  of  the  sensible  and 
the  supersensible  to  their  actual  concrete 
unity ;  but  the  preconception  with  which  he 
started  prevents  him  from  identifying  the 
ideal  and  the  real,  and  the  most  he  can  per- 
suade himself  to  say  is,  that  man  is  entitled 
to  a  rational  faith  in  God,  freedom  and  im- 
mortality, though  these  are  objects  which  lie 
beyond  the  range  of  his  knowledge. 

I  should  be  sorry  if  what  has  been  said 
should  suggest  the  idea  that  philosophy  is 
merely  a  series  of  brilliant  failures,  in  which 
each  new  thinker  vainly  strives  to  prove  the 
unprovable  proposition,  that  the  actual  world 
when  properly  understood  is  rational ;  rather, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  faith  in  the  rationality  of 


INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE  xxxvii 

the  universe  is  the  incentive  and  presupposi- 
tion of  all  philosophical  progress.  Nor  are 
the  failures  of  successive  philosophies  in  any 
case  absolute ;  with  each  step  in  advance  the 
problem  becomes  clearer  and  more  easy  of 
solution.  How  far  the  outline  of  Idealism 
contained  in  the  second  part  of  this  essay 
is  free  from  the  objections  which  I  have 
tried  to  indicate,  must  be  left  for  the  reader 
to  determine.  Perhaps  I  may  venture  to 
say  that,  if  it  has  any  special  value,  that 
value  lies  in  the  attempt  to  reconcile  the 
reality  of  individual  things,  and  especially 
the  freedom  and  individuality  of  man,  with 
the  fundamental  principle  of  Idealism,  that  the 
actual  properly  understood  is  a  manifestation 
in  various  degree  of  one  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  spiritual  Being. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  enumerate  all  the 
books  to  which  I  have  been  directly  or  in- 
directly indebted,  especially  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  the  first  part  of  this  essay ;  but  I 
must  not  omit  to  mention  the  various  works 
of  the  Master  of  Balliol,  and  of  Professor 
Pfleiderer,  as  well  as   Leopold  Schmidt's  Die 


xxxviii  INTRODUCTORY  PREFACE 

Ethik  der  alte^i  Griechen,  Mr.  J  ebb's  Growth 
and  Influence  of  Classical  Greek  Poetry,  with 
the  introductions  in  his  edition  of  Sophocles, 
Mr.  Bosanquet's  History  of  ^Esthetic,  Dr. 
Driver's  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  the 
Old  Testament  and  Isaiah,  Weber's  System 
der  altsy7iagogalen  palastinische^i  Theologie, 
Schlirer's  History  of  the  fewish  People,  Keim's 
fesus  of  Nazara,  and  Weizsacker's  Das  Apos- 
tolische  Zeitalter.  In  preparing  the  chapter 
on  the  Christian  Ideal  I  also  received  valu- 
able assistance  from  my  colleague,  Professor 
Macnaughton. 


JOHN   WATSON. 


Queen's  University,  Kingston,  Canada, 
October  i,  1896. 


PART   I 

THE   CHRISTIAN    IDEAL    OF    LIFE    IN 

RELATION   TO   THE    GREEK   AND 

JEWISH    IDEALS 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  OF  LIFE 


CHAPTER    I 

HISTORICAL    CONNEXION    OF    MORALITY    AND 
RELIGION 

Christianity,  as  it  issued  fresh  from  the 
mind  of  its  founder,  embodied  a  conception 
of  life  which  brought  rehgion  into  indissol- 
uble connexion  with  morality.  The  whole 
human  race  was  conceived  of  as  in  idea  a 
single  spiritual  organism,  in  which  each  man 
gains  his  own  perfection  by  self-conscious 
identification  with  all  the  rest,  and  this  com- 
munity of  life  was  held  to  be  possible  only 
because  man  is  identical  in  nature,  though 
not  in  person,  with  the  one  divine  principle 
which  is  manifested  in  all  forms  of  being. 
Man,  it  was  therefore  held,  is  unable  to 
come  to  unity  with  himself  until  he  has 
surrendered  his  whole  being  to  the  influence 


2  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OE  LIFE 

of  the  Holy  Spirit.  On  this  view  there  is 
no  basis  for  the  moral  ideal,  and  no  possi- 
bility of  its  realisation,  apart  from  the  relig- 
ious ideal ;  for  man  cannot  accept  as  the 
standard  of  his  life  an  ideal  which  is  not 
in  absolute  harmony  with  the  ultimate  prin- 
ciple of  the  universe ;  nor,  even  if  he  did, 
could  his  effort  to  realise  it  be  anything  but 
the  struggle  with  an  alien  power  too  strong 
for  him,  —  a  struggle  as  futile  as  the  attempt 
of  the  Teutonic  giant  of  the  northern  Saga 
to  lift  the  deep-seated  earth  from  its  foun- 
dations. Affirming  that  the  life  of  man  is 
moral,  just  in  so  far  as  it  is  in  harmony 
with  the  divine  nature,  Christianity  rests 
upon  the  belief  that  "goodness  is  the  nature 
of  things,"  and  therefore  it  maintains  that 
evil,  which  it  regards  as  positive  and  an- 
tagonistic to  good,  exists  in  order  to  be 
transcended,  and  must  succumb  to  the  all- 
conquering  power  of  goodness.  Accordingly, 
man's  religious  faith,  which  alone  gives  mean- 
ing to  his  moral  effort,  is  for  the  individual 
the  source  of  a  joyous  consciousness  of  unity 
with  himself,  just  because  in  overcoming  the 


CONNEXION  OF  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION       3 

world  he  overcomes  his  own  lower  self.  It  is 
true  that  the  evil  which  exists  without  and 
within  him  can  never  be  completely  abol- 
ished, but  it  is  always  in  process  of  being 
abolished ;  and  therefore  the  Christian  is  en- 
abled to  preserve  his  optimism  even  in  face 
of  the  worst  forms  of  evil. 

No  one  will  deny  that  in  this  triumphant 
faith  Jesus  and  his  first  followers  lived,  but 
the  objection  may  be  raised,  that  the  simple 
faith  of  an  earlier  age  is  not  possible  for 
us  in  these  days,  or  at  least  not  until  the 
doubts  and  perplexities,  which  the  facts  of 
experience,  the  results  of  science,  and  the 
deepened  reflection  of  our  time  inevitably 
suggest,  have  been  fairly  weighed  and  re- 
solved. The  wounds  of  reflection,  it  may  be 
said,  are  too  deep  to  be  healed  by  a  child- 
like faith  in  God  and  man,  which  rests  rather 
upon  sentiment  than  upon  rational  evidence. 
Many  will  go  even  further,  and  maintain  that 
morality  not  only  can,  but  must,  be  divorced 
from  religion,  and  that  in  any  case  it  does 
not  depend  for  its  support  upon  any  form 
of  religious  belief. 


4  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

Various  reasons  may  be  given  for  this  sep- 
aration of  morality  from  religion,  but  they 
will  all  be  found  to  rest  ultimately  on  the 
assumption  that  It  Is  not  possible  for  man, 
with  his  limited  faculties  and  knowledge,  to 
get  behind  the  veil  of  phenomena  and  grasp 
reality  as  it  is  in  itself.  Thus  the  real  be- 
comes simply  a  name  for  that  which  lies 
beyond  the  range  of  our  finite  vision,  and 
morality  is  therefore  conceived  as  merely  that 
course  of  conduct  which  we  must  adopt  in 
order  to  make  the  most  of  the  circumstances 
in  which  we  happen  to  be  placed.  So  firm 
a  hold  has  this  doctrine  taken  of  the  mod- 
ern mind,  that  not  merely  those  who  reject 
Christianity,  but  even  some  of  its  professed 
champions,  such  as  Mr.  Balfour,  regard  moral 
ideas  as  the  only  foundation  upon  which  even 
a  "  provisional  theory "  of  life  can  be  based ; 
and  we  even  find  Browning,  in  one  of  his 
moods,  suggesting  that  the  limitation  of 
knowledge  is  essential  to  the  stability  and 
progress  of  morality. 

An  attempt  will  be  made,  in  the  second 
part  of  this  essay,   to   show  that  religion  and 


CONNEXION  OF  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION       5 

morality  cannot  be  separated  from  each  other 
without  the  destruction  of  both,  and  that  the 
essential  identity  of  the  human  and  divine 
natures,  which  is  the  central  idea  of  Chris- 
tianity, is  the  legitimate  result  of  philosoph- 
ical reflection.  Meantime,  it  may  be  pointed 
out  that  the  whole  history  of  man  goes  to 
show  that  the  connexion  of  morality  with 
religion  is  so  close  that  no  advance  in  the 
one  has  ever  taken  place  without  a  corre- 
sponding advance  in  the  other.  What  is 
distinctive  of  Christianity  is  not  the  union 
of  morality  with  religion,  but  the  comprehen- 
siveness of  the  principle  upon  which  that 
union  is  based.  Every  religion  embodies  the 
highest  ideal  of  a  people,  and  the  morality 
which  corresponds  to  it  is  the  special  form 
in  which  that  ideal  is  sought  to  be  realised. 
It  follows  that,  when  the  religious  ideal  is 
no  longer  an  adequate  expression  of  the 
more  developed  consciousness  of  a  people, 
the  moral  ideal  is  also  perceived  to  be  in 
need  of  revision.  Thus  the  history  of  re- 
ligion is  inseparable  from  the  history  of 
morality. 


6  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

That  religion  and  morality  have,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  always  been  connected  in  the 
closest  way,  might  be  proved  by  a  detailed 
examination  of  the  whole  history  of  religion ; 
but,  as  the  proof  would  lead  us  too  far 
afield,  one  or  two  instances  where  the  con- 
nexion seems  at  first  sight  to  be  broken  will 
have  to  suffice. 

(i)  It  has  been  maintained  that  in  early 
times  religion  had  nothing  to  do  with  moral- 
ity. That  this  view  is  untenable,  it  will 
not  be  difficult  to  show.  One  of  the  earliest 
forms  of  religion  is  the  belief  in  a  god  or 
totem,  who  is  at  once  some  being  lower  than 
man,  and  yet  is  regarded  as  the  ancestor  of 
a  particular  family  or  tribe.  The  theory  of 
Mr.  Spencer,  that  this  form  of  religion  orig- 
inated in  the  worship  of  ancestors  and  was 
afterwards  developed  into  totemism,  cannot 
be  accepted,  because  it  assumes  that  primi- 
tive man  was  at  a  higher  stage  of  devel- 
opment than  his  descendants.  If  primitive 
man  was  able  to  draw  a  clear  distinction 
between  himself  and  lower  forms  of  being,  it 
is  inconceivable   that    his    descendants   should 


CONNEXION  OF  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION       7 

have  seen  no  fundamental  distinction  between 
them.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  the 
totem,  which  is  ahnost  always  a  plant,  an 
animal,  or  other  natural  object,  is  viewed  as 
divine  because  it  forms  the  medium  for  that 
haunting  sense  of  something  incomprehensi- 
ble and  therefore  divine,  of  which  even  early 
man  is  not  entirely  destitute.  The  totem  is 
the  form  in  which  this  feeling  is  objectified, 
and  it  then  becomes  the  vehicle  for  the  ideal 
union  of  the  family  or  tribe.  Thus  the  re- 
ligion of  early  man  is  bound  up  with  the 
elementary  moral  ideas  which  rule  his  life. 
The  only  social  bond  of  which  he  can  con- 
ceive is  that  of  the  family  or  tribe.  More- 
over, the  members  of  each  family  or  tribe, 
while  they  are  closely  related  to  one  another, 
are  usually  hostile  to  other  families  or  tribes ; 
and  hence  the  morality  which  corresponds  to 
this  phase  of  religion  is  based  upon  hatred  of 
all  who  fall  beyond  its  limited  range.  Here, 
therefore,  the  correspondence  of  religion  and 
morality  is  obvious:  a  religion  in  wliich  the 
object  of  worship  is  viewed  as  the  ancestor 
of  a  certain  stock  naturally  goes  with  a  form 


8  THE   CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

of  morality  which  involves  hatred  of  the 
members  of  all  other  stocks.  This  hatred, 
as  it  is  inseparable  from  the  moral  ideas  of 
early  man,  finds  its  expression  in  his  relig- 
ion :  and  hence  the  totems  of  other  families 
or  tribes  are  regarded  as  evil  spirits,  whose 
baneful  influence  can  be  counteracted  only  by 
cunning  and  magical  spells. 

(2)  Perhaps  it  may  be  conceded  that  the 
morality  of  early  man  is  a  faithful  reflex  of 
his  religion,  but  it  may  be  held  that  their 
connexion  is  dissolved  when  an  advance  has 
been  made  to  a  more  developed  form  of 
society.  It  is  easy  to  understand  that,  in 
the  earlier  stages  of  human  history,  whatever 
is  sanctioned  by  religion  should  be  blindly 
followed ;  but  at  a  more  advanced  stage,  when 
reflection  begins  to  claim  its  rights,  it  may 
seem  that  progress  in  morality  is  rather 
hindered  than  aided  by  religion.  Was  it 
religion,  it  may  be  asked,  which  led  in  Greece 
to  the  higher  morality  of  the  age  of  Pericles } 
Would  it  not  be  truer  to  say  that  the  relig- 
ion of  Greece  was  far  behind  its  morality,  and 
offered  a  stubborn  resistance  to  its  progress } 


CONNEXION  OF  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION       g 

"  The  Greek  poets,"  as  Mr.  Max  Mliller  says, 
"  had  an  instinctive  aversion  to  anything  ex- 
cessive or  monstrous,  yet  they  would  relate 
of  their  gods  what  would  make  the  most 
savage  of  Red  Indians  creep  and  shudder." 
Does  not  this  fact  clearly  show  that  morality 
advances  independently  of  religion,  and  may 
even  be  in  conflict  with  it  ? 

The  answer  to  this  argument  for  the  sepa- 
ration of  morality  and  religion  is  not  far 
to  seek.  The  moral  ideas  of  the  age  of 
Pericles  were  no  doubt  antagonistic  to  the 
older  religious  ideas  preserved  in  Greek  my- 
thology, but  they  were  in  perfect  harmony 
with  the  religious  ideas  which  really  ruled 
the  best  minds.  The  sanctity  which  attaches 
to  religion  long  preserves  traditional  forms  of 
belief  from  being  openly  assailed,  but  this  is 
quite  consistent  with  a  transformation  of  the 
whole  spirit  of  the  earlier  faith.  In  estimat- 
ing the  character  of  a  religion  we  must  in  all 
cases  make  allowance  for  the  survival  of 
ideas  which  have  lost  their  power  and  mean- 
ing, and  concentrate  our  attention  upon  the 
new  content    which    is    preserved    in    the    old 


10  THE   CHRISriAN-  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

earthen  vessels.  The  appHcatlon  of  this  prin- 
ciple, which  is  universal  in  its  range,  is  in 
the  present  case  obvious.  The  Greek  relig- 
ion, like  the  religion  of  every  progressive 
people,  was  in  continuous  process  of  develop- 
ment ;  but  in  its  later  phases  it  retained 
elements  which,  though  they  were  not  ex- 
plicitly rejected,  occupied  a  very  subordinate 
place  and  were  practically  ignored.  The  real 
religious  beliefs  of  Greece  in  the  age  of 
Pericles  were  embodied,  not  in  its  mythology, 
but  in  the  interpretation  of  the  legends  given 
by  Pindar,  ^schylus,  and  Sophocles.  When 
this  is  once  seen,  it  becomes  obvious  that 
the  relio;ion  of  Greece,  so  far  from  beino^  at 
any  time  on  a  lower  plane  than  its  morality, 
was  in  all  cases  an  expression  of  the  highest 
ideal  of  which  the  Greek  was  capable,  an  ideal 
which  he  was  seeking  to  realise  in  the  various 
forms  of  his  social  life. 

(3)  As  the  morality  of  Greece  seems  at 
first  sight  to  be  in  advance  of  its  religion, 
so  it  may  appear  that  the  religious  ideal  of 
the  Jews  is  entirely  divorced  from  their  moral 
conceptions.     The    continual    refrain    of    their 


CONNEXION'  OF  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION     1 1 

great  prophets,  especially  those  of  the  eighth 
century,  is  that  Israel,  while  she  accepts  the 
lofty  ideal  of  God  revealed  long  ago  to  their 
fathers,  has,  in  practice,  forsaken  the  Lord, 
and  is  governed  by  the  lowest  ethical  ideal. 
When,  however,  we  penetrate  beneath  the 
form  of  the  prophetic  utterances,  it  becomes 
obvious  that  the  Jews  are  no  exception  to 
the  rule  that  the  moral  and  religious  ideas 
of  a  people  are  the  precise  counterpart  of 
each  other.  The  Jewish  prophet  refers  the 
higher  conception  of  God,  with  which  he 
is  himself  inspired,  to  an  original  revelation 
given  by  God  to  his  people  in  the  past, 
while  in  truth  that  conception  has  been 
gradually  evolved  out  of  a  lower  and  cruder 
form  of  faith.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that  the 
religious  ideal  upon  which  he  insists  is  far 
in  advance  of  the  moral  ideas  of  his  time, 
but  it  is  equally  in  advance  of  its  religious 
ideas.  The  mass  of  the  Jewish  people  had 
never  freed  themselves  from  the  earlier  idea 
of  a  tribal  god  who  was  gracious  to  Israel 
and  terrible  to  her  enemies;  and  hence  their 
morality  was  not  in  harmony  with   that  ideal 


12  THE  CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

of  an  absolutely  holy  God,  "of  purer  eyes 
than  to  behold  iniquity,"  which  had  disclosed 
itself  in  the  higher  consciousness  of  the 
prophets.  The  religious  conceptions  of  the 
Jewish  people  as  a  whole  were,  therefore,  in 
entire  harmony  with  their  moral  conceptions. 
The  contradiction  is  not  between  a  pure  and 
lofty  religion  and  a  low  moral  ideal,  but  be- 
tween the  lower  ideal,  religious  and  moral, 
beyond  which  the  people  had  not  advanced, 
and  the  higher  ideal  embodied  in  the  pro- 
phetic utterances.  It  is  no  doubt  a  radical 
distinction  between  the  Greek  and  the  Jew- 
ish religion,  that  the  former  was  simply  an 
idealised  transcript  of  society  as  it  actually 
existed,  while  the  latter,  in  its  higher  form, 
was  a  picture  of  a  righteous  kingdom  that 
was  placed  in  some  far-off  future;  but  this 
distinction,  important  as  it  is,  does  not  im- 
ply that  the  Jewish  religion  created  a  di- 
vorce between  the  ideal  and  the  actual.  For, 
though  the  prophets  continually  speak  of  a 
time  when  Israel  shall  "  return  "  to  the  Lord, 
this  "  return "  is  in  reality  an  advance  to  a 
higher   form    of    religion    and    morality.     The 


CONNEXION  OF  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION     13 

ideal  of  the  future  is  always  conceived  to 
consist  in  a  religious  reformation  whicli  will 
manifest  itself  in  a  moral  regeneration ;  and 
though,  at  a  very  late  age,  the  hope  of  de- 
liverance from  outward  and  inward  evil  by 
a  natural  process  of  development  had  been 
lost,  the  Jewish  mind  never  entirely  aban- 
doned its  belief  in  the  triumph  of  good  and 
the  destruction  of  evil.  It  is  thus  evident 
that  throughout  the  whole  history  of  Israel 
religion  was  in  the  most  intimate  connexion 
with  morality. 

Without  seeking  further  to  elaborate  a 
point  which  seems  almost  self-evident,  it 
may  now  be  assumed  that  as  a  matter  of 
historical  fact  there  never  has  been  any  real 
antasfonism  between  the  relis^ion  and  the 
morality  of  a  people,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
the  most  intimate  connexion.  How,  indeed, 
should  it  be  otherwise,  since  every  religion 
is  an  attempt  to  prevent  the  life  of  man 
from  dissolving  into  a  chaos  of  fragments 
by  referring  it  to  a  principle  which  reduces 
it  to  order  and  coherence }  There  can  be 
no  morality  without  the  belief  in  a  life  higher 


14  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

than  sense  and  passion,  and  this  beHef  must 
draw  its  support  from  faith  in  a  divine  prin- 
ciple which  ensures  victory  to  the  higher 
hfe.  We  must  not  forget,  however,  that  re- 
hgion,  hke  morahty,  is  a  process  which  can 
reach  its  goal  only  when  the  divine  princi- 
ple is  so  comprehensive  that  it  explains  the 
whole  of  life,  and  leaves  no  difficulty  un- 
solved. Thus  the  religious  and  moral  ideals 
of  a  people,  though  they  sum  up  all  that 
is  best  and  noblest  in  its  life,  may  fall  far 
short  of  an  ultimate  explanation.  That  nei- 
ther the  Greek  nor  the  Jewish  ideal  had 
reached  a  satisfactory  conception  of  the  true 
nature  and  relation  of  God,  man,  and  the 
world,  it  will  not  be  hard  to  show;  and  it 
is  therefore  obvious  that  a  higher  synthesis 
was  imperatively  demanded.  But  the  impor- 
tant question,  it  will  be  said,  is  not  whether 
Greece  and  Judea  failed,  —  a  proposition  no 
one  is  likely  to  dispute,  —  but  whether  Chris- 
tianity is  not  also  another,  even  if  it  be  a 
more  splendid,  failure.  That  this  is  the  only 
really  important  question  for  us  may  be  at 
once  admitted,  but    it    will    hardly  be    denied 


CONNEXION  OF  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION     15 

that  a  clear  conception  of  what  the  Christian 
ideal  of  life  in  its  permanent  essence  is,  and 
wherein  its  superiority  to  other  ideals  con- 
sists, is  a  necessary  preparation  for  an  intelli- 
gent estimate  of  its  claim  to  be  the  ultimate 
ideal  of  life.  To  answer  these  questions  thor- 
oughly would  involve  a  critical  estimate  of 
all  the  religions  of  the  world.  In  the  pres- 
ent essay,  nothing  so  ambitious  will  be  at- 
tempted; but  perhaps  a  careful  examination 
and  comparison  of  the  Greek,  Jew^ish,  and 
Christian  ideals  of  life  may  be  as  convincing 
as  a  wider  survey. 

Before  entering  upon  this  task  it  may  help 
to  illustrate  somewhat  more  fully  the  thesis 
of  the  present  chapter,  that  religion  and 
morality  have  always  developed  pari  passu, 
if  we  glance  at  the  different  paths  which  the 
religious  consciousness  has  followed  among 
different  peoples,  and  the  goal  which  they 
have  severally  attained. 

There  seems  reason  to  believe  that  all  re- 
ligions are  either  totemistic  or  have  devel- 
oped from  totemism.  We  may,  therefore, 
regard    this    form    of    religion    as,    if    not    the 


1 6  THE  CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

earliest,  at  least  a  very  early  form  of  religion. 
Traces  of  it  are  found  even  in  those  nations 
in  which  civilisation  originated,  and  which 
reached  a  much  higher  ideal  of  life,  such  as 
the  Chinese,  the  Indian,  the  Greek,  and  the 
Jewish  ;  and  indeed  it  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  natural  form  in  which  the  ideal  of  the 
family  or  the  tribe  is  embodied,  since  that 
ideal  is  based  entirely  upon  the  tie  of  blood. 
We  may  thus  regard  totemism  as  the  orig- 
inal matrix  from  which  all  other  forms  of 
religion  were  developed. 

Totemism,  however,  gives  way  to  a  higher 
form  of  religion,  whenever  a  people  advances 
to  anything  like  a  settled  form  of  society. 
This  second  stage  of  religion,  among  all  the 
great  nations  of  antiquity,  except  the  Jewish, 
whose  religious  development  is  unique,  con- 
sists in  the  worship  of  the  divine  as  mani- 
fested in  those  universal  powers  of  nature  — 
the  heavens,  the  sun,  the  winds,  etc.  — 
which  exercise  so  large  an  influence  upon 
the  natural  life  of  man,  while  yet  they  are 
altogether  beyond  the  control  of  his  will. 
Now    it    is  easy    to    see    how    a   people,   who 


CONNEXION  OP  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION     \J 

embodied  their  reliQ:ious  ideal  in  these  cfrcat 
natural  powers,  should  also  have  a  higher 
moral  ideal  than  races  which  never  got  beyond 
the  stage  of  totemism.  Early  man  found  in 
his  totem  somethino^  hio-her  than  himself,  but 
the  divinity  he  ascribed  to  it  was  not  so  much 
in  the  object  as  in  his  own  mind,  or  at  least 
it  was  only  in  the  object  in  the  sense  that 
nothing  can  exist  which  is  not  in  some  w^ay 
a  manifestation  of  the  divine.  But,  when  the 
divine  is  found  in  objects,  which  in  force  or 
splendour  surpass  the  weak  physical  energy 
of  man,  the  object  selected  is  not  altogether 
inadequate  as  a  symbol  of  that  spiritual  power 
which  man  is  feeling  after;  and  as  it  is  a 
universal  object,  it  is  not  an  inappropriate 
medium  of  the  new  ideal  of  a  social  unity 
embracing  a  number  of  tribes  allied  in  blood. 
Thus  the  worship  of  the  great  powers  of 
nature  supplies  a  religious  ideal  which  helps 
to  unite  all  the  members  of  allied  tribes  by 
the  bond  of  a  common  faith. 

From  the  worship  of  these  natural  powers 
the  hio-her  races  advance  to  the  stao-e  of  what 
is   ordinarily   called   polytheism.      The    transi- 


1 8  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

tion  is  effected  by  the  tendency  to  personify 
those  powers,  and  thus  to  bring  them  nearer 
to  man.  It  is  at  this  point  that  a  highly 
significant  divergence  takes  place,  a  diver- 
gence which  determines  the  direction  in  which 
the  subsequent  development  takes  place.  The 
Egyptian  and  Indian  do  indeed  personify  the 
gods,  and  thus  for  the  time  lift  them  out  of 
the  lower  rank  of  mere  powers  of  nature, 
but  they  do  not  Jutmanisc  them.  Hence  their 
polytheism  takes  the  form  of  what  Mr.  Max 
Miiller  has  called  henotheism.  Tlie  ten- 
dency to  unity,  as  well  as  multiplicity,  is  in 
operation  from  the  very  dawn  of  religion. 
Even  races  who  have  not  advanced  beyond 
the  primitive  stage  of  totemism  always  have  a 
god  who  is  regarded  as  higher  than  the  other 
totems,  and  in  nature-worship  the  heavens  is 
naturally  taken  as  the  highest  embodiment  of 
the  divine.  The  tendency  to  unification  is 
therefore  present  from  the  first,  but  in  the 
henotheistic  phase  of  polytheism  it  assumes 
the  peculiar  form  that  each  god  becomes  at 
the  time  of  worsliip  the  only  one  who  is 
present    to    the    consciousness    of    the    wor- 


CONNEXJON  OF  MORAL/TV  AND  RELIGION     19 

shipper,  and  hence  to  him  are  attributed  for 
the  time  beino-  all  the  attributes  which  at 
other  times  are  distributed  among  a  number 
of  gods.  Now  the  importance  of  directing 
attention  to  this  tendency  to  henotheism  is 
that  it  explains  why  the  Egyptian  and  Indian 
religions  developed,  not  into  monotheism,  but 
into  pantheism.  The  Greek  religion,  on  the 
other  hand,  not  only  personified  but  human- 
ised the  gods,  and  the  clearly  cut  types  thus 
formed  became  a  permanent  possession  of 
the  race.  Hence,  when  the  Greek  finally 
abandoned  polytheism,  his  religion  developed 
into  monotheism,  not  into  pantheism ;  and 
so  long  as  he  remained  polytheistic  the  in- 
stinct for  unity  was  satisfied  by  conceiving 
of  Zeus  as  the  Father  and  Ruler  of  the  gods, 
or  later  as  the  representative  of  their  united 
will.  Now,  whether  polytheism  assumes  the 
henotheistic  or  the  Greek  form,  it  is  obvious 
that  it  presents  an  ideal  which  serves  to  unite 
all  the  members  of  a  nation  by  a  common 
worship.  Nor  does  it  seem  fanciful  to  say 
that  polytheism  is  the  natural  form  which 
the    religious    ideal     assumes    among     nations 


20  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

which  have  been  either  formed  into  a  single 
political  unit  by  a  combination  of  tribes  allied 
in  blood,  or  into  a  number  of  independent 
units  united  only  by  the  bonds  of  a  common 
descent  and  a  common  religion ;  in  any  case, 
it  serves  as  the  vehicle  for  the  religious 
ideal  of  peoples  who  cannot  conceive  of  a 
wider  bond  than  that  of  the  nation,  or  of  the 
nation  as  other  than  a  political  unity  based 
upon  the  natural  tie  of  blood.  Polytheism, 
therefore,  tended  to  perpetuate  absolute  dis- 
tinctions of  caste,  or  of  master  and  slave, 
and  it  naturally  fostered  a  proud  contempt 
for  all  who  belonged  to  another  nation,  and 
therefore  could  not  claim  descent  from  the 
gods  of  their  country.  Here,  therefore,  we 
have  another  proof,  if  further  proof  were 
needed,  of  the  close  correspondence  between 
religion  and  morality. 

Polytheism,  as  has  already  been  indicated, 
develops  either  into  pantheism,  or  into  mon- 
otheism. When  it  is  of  a  henotheistic  type, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Egyptians  and  Indians, 
it  naturally  takes  the  former  direction ;  the 
Greek  religion,  with  its  definitely  characterised 


CONNEXION  OF  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION     21 

human  types,  as  naturally  follows  the  latter 
direction.  Both  the  Egyptian  and  the  Hindu 
are  deficient  in  that  poetic  and  artistic  fac- 
ulty, which  is  characteristic  of  the  Greek, 
and  hence  they  never  succeed  in  imparting 
freedom  and  spirituality  to  their  gods.  With 
the  rise  of  reflection  the  tendency  to  unity, 
which  has  already  shown  itself  in  their  hen- 
otheism,  carries  them  beyond  the  tendency  to 
multiplicity,  and  as  their  gods  have  not  been 
conceived  as  endowed  with  intelligence  and 
will,  they  come  to  conceive  of  the  divine 
as  a  purely  abstract  being,  of  which  nothing 
can  be  said  but  that  it  is.  To  this  relig- 
ious ideal  corresponds  the  ethical  ideal.  If 
the  divine  nature  is  absolutely  without  dis- 
tinction, man  can  become  divine  only  by 
the  destruction  of  all  that  constitutes  his 
separate  individuality.  Thus  pantheism  leads 
to  the  dissolution  of  all  fixed  moral  distinc- 
tions, and  therefore  to  the  denial  of  any 
radical  distinction  between  good  and  evil. 
"  Whatever  is,  is  right."  It  can  therefore 
look  with  perfect  calmness  upon  the  wildest 
aberrations    of   passion,  and   it   leads    in    men 


22  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

of  a  higher  type  to  asceticism,  only  because 
it  regards  passion  as  a  form  of  that  universal 
illusion,  or  Maya,  which  supposes  the  finite 
to  be  real. 

The  Greek  religion,  as  the  product  of  a 
race  of  poets  and  artists,  whose  nature  re- 
sponded gladly  to  all  the  divine  beauty  and 
order  of  the  world  and  of  human  life,  could 
not  thus  pass  into  a  joyless  pantheism. 
Hence,  under  the  influence  of  its  poets  and 
philosophers,  it  developed  into  a  monothe- 
ism, in  which  the  divine  was  conceived  as 
a  single  spiritual  Being,  endowed  with  in- 
telligence and  will.  It  is  significant  that 
the  Greeks  only  reached  this  stage,  when 
their  narrow  civic  state  had  already  revealed 
its  inadequacy,  and  when  the  bond  of  nation- 
ality, which  had  been  hitherto  preserved  by 
loyalty  to  the  national  faith,  had  lost  its 
power.  Thus  the  wider  conception  of  re- 
ligion was  reflected  in  the  virtual  dissolution 
of  civic  and  national  morality.  It  is  time,  how- 
ever, to  consider  more  carefully  the  strength 
and  weakness  of  the  Greek  ideal  of  life. 
This  will  be  done  in  the  following  chapter. 


CHAPTER    II 


THE    GREEK    IDEAL 


Starting,  like  the  other  Indo-European 
peoples,  from  the  worship  of  the  great  powers 
of  nature,  the  Greeks  developed  a  form  of 
religion  which  is  the  highest  type  of  poly- 
theism. This  religion  was  the  embodiment 
of  that  love  of  beauty,  truth,  and  freedom, 
which  is  distinctive  of  the  Greek  spirit.  In 
the  Homeric  poems,  the  transition  from  the 
worship  of  nature  has  already  been  made. 
The  gods  are  not  only  personified,  but  hu- 
manised. Turning  his  eyes  to  the  expanse 
of  heaven,  the  early  Greek  expressed  his 
consciousness  of  the  divine  in  the  majestic 
form  of  Zeus,  whose  nod  shook  the  whole 
heavens  and  the  earth.  The  physical  splen- 
dour of  the  sun  became  for  him  the  radi- 
ant form  of  Apollo,  shooting  down  gleaming 
arrows  from  his  silver  bow.     Thus  was  grad- 

23 


24  THE  CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

ually  formed,  not  without  the  addition  of 
new  elements  and  even  new  gods,  sometimes 
borrowed  from  Semitic  sources  but  invari- 
ably transmuted  into  higher  form,  the  pan- 
theon of  glorious  shapes  which  filled  the 
imagination  of  Homer.  The  divine  nature 
is  conceived  as  manifested  in  distinct  types, 
each  possessed  of  intelligence  and  will,  and 
embodied  in  human  forms,  which  exhibit  the 
utmost  perfection  of  physical  beauty.  These 
gracious  forms  only  differ  from  man  in  the 
perfection  of  their  spiritual  and  physical  qual- 
ities, and  in  their  freedom  from  decay  and 
death.  Thus  the  Greek  expresses  in  his  re- 
ligion his  ideal  of  perfect  manhood  as  the 
complete  harmony  of  soul  and  body.  Were 
it  possible  to  secure  and  retain  for  ever  physi- 
cal, intellectual,  and  moral  beauty,  the  ideal 
of  the  early  Greek  would  be  realised.  That 
ideal,  however,  was  one  which  did  not  sepa- 
rate the  good  of  the  individual  from  the 
good  of  society.  Achilles  is  distinguished, 
not  merely  by  splendid  physical  beauty, 
powers,  and  eloquence,  but  by  his  burning 
indignation     against     wrong :     and,    when     he 


THE   GREEK  IDEAL  25 

carries  his  resentment  against  Agamemnon  to 
an  extreme  which  threatens  the  destruction 
of  the  whole  Greek  host,  he  is  punished  by 
an  untimely  death.  So  Zeus  is  the  imper- 
sonation of  a  wise  and  just  ruler,  Apollo 
the  divine  type  of  the  poetic  and  religious 
mind,  Athena  the  ideal  of  valour  directed 
and  kept  in  check  by  wise  self-restraint. 
The  Greek  gods  are  thus  the  expression  of 
the  Greek  ideal  of  a  society  in  which  the 
highest  natural  qualities  are  valued  as  a 
means  to  the  realisation  of  a  free  community. 
The  Homeric  king  is  not  a  despot,  but  the 
guardian  of  the  sacred  customs  on  which 
the  rights  of  his  subjects  are  based.  He 
does  nothing  without  consulting  his  council 
of  elders,  and  the  public  assembly  consists 
of  the  whole  body  of  citizens.  The  world  of 
the  gods  is  an  idealised  counterpart  of  the 
heroic  form  of  society;  and,  in  fact,  the 
early  Greek  could  only  conceive  of  the  di- 
vine as  a  community  of  gods,  living  in  each 
other's  society,  and  sympathising  with  the 
fortunes  of  men. 

The    Homeric    eods   are   thus   the    embodi- 


26  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

ment  of  that  free  and  joyous  existence  which 
was  the  ideal  of  life  of  the  early  Greek.  The 
Greek  religion  is  essentially  a  religion  of 
this  world ;  for,  though  the  Greek  believed  in  a 
shadowy  realm  of  the  dead,  his  heart  was  set 
upon  the  beauty,  the  joy,  the  sunlight  of  this 
world,  and  he  looked  forward  to  the  future  life, 
without  dread,  indeed,  but  with  a  melancholy 
resignation.  With  his  intrepid  intellect  he 
had  a  clear  and  sober  apprehension  of  the 
shortness  of  life  and  the  limitations  of  hu- 
manity, but  he  had  not  yet  lost  the  fresh 
exuberance  of  the  youth  of  the  world;  and 
in  devotion  to  his  country  and  faith  in  divine 
justice,  he  found  all  that  was  needed  to  satisfy 
his  highest  desires.  Entirely  free  from  a 
slavish  dread  of  the  gods,  he  came  into  their 
presence  with  joyous  confidence.  He  did  not 
forget  that  his  destiny  lay  on  the  knees  of  the 
gods,  but,  having  perfect  faitli  in  their  justice, 
he  did  not  prostrate  himself  before  them  with 
the  abject  submission  of  the  Asiatic. 

Tlie  charm  of  this  conception  of  life  has 
never  failed  to  exercise  a  peculiar  fascination, 
and  indeed   it   contains   elements  which   must 


THE  GREEK  IDEAL  27 

be  embodied  in  the  modern  ideal,  though  these 
must  be  transmuted  into  a  higher  form.  Its 
fundamental  defect  is  that  it  can  be  approxi- 
mately realised  only  by  those  who  possess 
exceptional  gifts  of  nature  and  fortune,  and 
that  it  conceives  of  the  highest  life  as  simply 
the  expansion  of  the  natural  life.  The  Greek 
was  destitute  of  that  profound  consciousness 
of  the  Infinite  which  was  characteristic  of  the 
Jewish  religion,  and  therefore  of  the  wide 
interval  between  man  as  he  is  and  as  he  ous^ht 
to  be.  No  doubt  in  his  deepest  nature  man 
is  identical  with  God,  but  his  deepest  nature 
reveals  itself  only  when  he  turns  against  his 
immediate  self.  Of  this  truth  the  Greek  had 
no  proper  apprehension,  and  therefore  he 
never  got  beyond  the  ideal  of  a  perfect  natural 
life,  in  which  the  spiritual  and  natural  were 
in  harmony  with  each  other,  and  of  a  State 
in  which  the  individual  citizen  found  his  com- 
plete satisfaction  in  devotion  to  the  common 
weal.  That  this  limited  ideal  could  not  be 
permanently  satisfactory  is  shown  by  the  grad- 
ual emergence  of  a  deeper  conception  of  life, 
which  as  time  went  on  came  more  and  more 


28  THE  CHRrSTlA^^  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

into  the  foreground,  until  it  finally  led,  in  the 
poets  and  philosophers,  to  a  complete  trans- 
formation of  the  earlier  belief. 

Though  the  Greek  religion  is  the  highest 
form  of  polytheism,  it  has,  like  all  polytheistic 
religions,  the  fundamental  defect  of  having 
no  adequate  idea  of  the  unity  and  spirituality 
of  the  divine  jmture.  This  defect  is,  in  the 
Greek  form  of  polytheism,  made  all  the  more 
prominent  by  the  individuality  ascribed  to  the 
eods.  The  2:ods,  as  embodied  in  sensible 
human  form,  are  limited  in  space  and  time, 
and  hence  their  relation  to  man  is  inadequately 
conceived.  There  can  be  no  proper  compre- 
hension of  the  unity  and  spirituality  of  the 
divine  nature,  so  long  as  the  divine  is  con- 
ceived as  merely  the  perfection  of  the  natural. 
Beings  who  are  regarded  as  limited  in  space 
and  time  cannot  be  the  source  of  all  reality, 
and  their  relation  to  man  can  only  be  external. 
Hence  the  Greek  o-ods  themselves  were  .con- 
ceived  as  having  come  into  existence  at  a 
definite  time,  and  their  action  upon  men  was 
represented  as  their  actual  sensible  appearance 
to   their  favourites.     Athena   presents    herself 


THE  GREEK  IDEAL  29 

in  human  shape  to  Achilles,  and  persuades 
him  to  abandon  his  purpose  of  slaying  Aga- 
memnon;  Aphrodite  hides  Paris  in  a  cloud 
when  he  flees  from  the  spear  of  Menelaus. 
Thus  the  life  of  man  is  represented  as  directly 
interfered  with  by  the  gods,  so  that  man  seems 
to  be  merely  a  puppet  in  their  hands.  This 
defect  is  inseparable  from  the  pictorial  form 
of  the  religion,  which  necessarily  represents 
the  spiritual  as  on  the  same  plane  with  the 
natural. 

Even  in  Homer,  however,  there  are  ele- 
ments which  show  that  the  Greek  reliction 
must  ultimately  accomplish  its  own  euthana- 
sia. There  was  in  it  from  the  first  a  latent 
contradiction  which  could  not  fail  to  mani- 
fest itself  openly  at  a  later  time.  The  very 
concreteness  and  humanity  of  the  gods  was 
at  variance  with  the  instinct  for  unity,  which 
could  neither  be  suppressed  nor  reconciled 
with  the  polytheistic  basis  of  the  traditional 
faith.  To  a  certain  extent  that  instinct  was 
satisfied  by  the  conception  of  Zeus  as  the 
"  Father  of  gods  and  men,"  whose  authority, 
though  it  is  not  absolute,  is  higher  than  that 


30  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

of  the  other  gods.  But  this  conception  could 
only  be  temporarily  satisfactory ;  and,  indeed, 
even  in  Homer,  there  is  already  indicated  a 
deeper  sort  of  unity,  which  is  inconsistent 
with  this  mere  unity  of  the  pictorial  imagina- 
tion. For  Homer,  like  his  successors,  was 
strongly  impressed  with  the  belief  that  the 
life  of  man  is  subject  to  divine  control,  and 
that  his  destiny  is  determined  in  accordance 
with  absolute  principles  of  justice.  Paris 
violates  the  sacred  bond  which  united  host 
and  guest,  and  punishment  falls  upon  him- 
self and  all  his  kindred.  The  Trojans  break 
the  oath  to  which  they  had  solemnly  sworn, 
and  draw  down  upon  themselves  the  punish- 
ment which  they  deserved.  There  was  thus 
an  absolute  faith  in  the  righteous  judgments 
of  the  gods.  Such  a  faith  could  not  be 
reconciled  with  the  caprice,  partiality,  and 
lawlessness,  which  were  ascribed  to  the  gods 
in  their  individual  character.  For  they  are 
represented  as  not  only  violating  accepted 
moral  laws,  but  as  at  variance  with  one  an- 
other, and  guilty  of  gross  favouritism.  This 
unreconciled    antagonism    was    partly    due    to 


THE   GREEK  WEAL  3 1 

the  survival  of  earlier  and  less  elevated  ideas 
of  the  divine  nature,  to  which  custom  and 
tradition  lent  an  adventitious  sanctity,  but  it 
was  also  inseparable  from  the  anthropomor- 
phism of  the  Greek  religion.  The  conflict 
of  competing  ideas  is  especially  apparent  in 
the  conception  of  Zeus,  whose  character  as 
an  individual  is  widely  different  from  what 
has  been  called  his  official  character  as  the 
exponent  of  the  common  will  of  the  gods. 
Sometimes  Homer  speaks  of  Zeus  as  reward- 
ing or  punishing  men ;  sometimes  this  power 
is  vested  in  the  gods  as  a  w^iole.  In  the 
Iliad  Zeus  is  called  the  guardian  of  oaths, 
while  yet  Agamemnon  speaks  of  the  suffer- 
ings inflicted  by  "  the  gods  "  upon  those  who 
swear  falsely.  In  the  Odyssey  there  are  even 
passages  in  which  an  abrupt  transition  is 
made  from  the  gods  to  Zeus,  as  when  Telema- 
chus  invokes  the  gods,  "  If  perchance  Zeus 
will  punish  the  wickedness  of  the  suitors 
(1.  378)."  This  tendency  to  conceive  of  Zeus 
as  the  sole  administrator  of  justice,  which 
is  manifest  even  in  the  Homeric  poems, 
becomes  more   and  more   pronounced,  so  that 


32  THE  CHRISTIAN  WEAL    OF  LHE 

in  the  period  between  Homer  and  the  Per- 
sian wars,  it  is  ahiiost  invariably  Zeus  who 
is  spoken  of  as  the  guardian  of  moral  order. 
Thus,  without  any  explicit  rejection  of  poly- 
theism, there  was  a  continual  tendency  to 
transcend  it.  Isocrates,  who  is  the  spokes- 
man, not  of  philosophers  like  Anaxagoras, 
but  of  the  educated  common  sense  of  his 
time,  explains  the  poetic  representation  of 
Zeus  as  king  of  the  gods  by  the  natural 
tendency  to  figure  the  divine  government 
after  the  fashion  of  an  earthly  state.  Besides 
this  explicit  criticism  of  the  popular  faith, 
the  striving  after  a  higher  idea  of  the  divine 
is  shown  in  the  reverential  feeling  which 
led  the  worshipper,  in  calling  upon  one  of 
the  gods  to  add,  "  or  by  whatever  name  thou 
mayst  desire  to  be  called."  But  nothing 
shows  more  clearly  the  tendency  to  go  be- 
yond the  earlier  mode  of  thought  than  the 
indefinite  terms  by  which  the  divine  power 
is  designated  by  the  prose  writers.  They 
still,  no  doubt,  speak  of  "  the  gods,"  but  they 
usually  employ  such  expressions  as  "  the 
divine,"  "the  god,"  "the  daemonic,"  when  they 


THE  GREEK  IDEAL  33 

have   to    speak    of  the    moral    government    of 
the  world. 

There  is  thus  In  the  development  of  Greek 
thought  a  clearly  marked  tendency  to  unity, 
manifesting  itself,  on  the  one  hand,  in  the 
conception  of  Zeus  as  the  exponent  of  the 
common  will  of  the  gods ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  the  conception  of  "something  divine," 
which  was  not  definitely  embodied  in  the 
gods  of  the  popular  faith.  It  has  been  held 
that  the  Greek  conception  of  a  "  fate,"  to 
which  the  gods  as  v/ell  as  men  are  subject, 
indicates  a  certain  pantheistic  tendency  in 
the  Greek  mind,  which  was  only  kept  in 
check  by  the  opposite  tendency  to  conceive 
of  the  divine  as  personal.  This  view  seems 
to  imply  that  every  attempt  to  transcend 
particularism  and  anthropomorphism  indicates 
a  movement  towards  pantheism.  It  seems 
more  natural  to  say  tliat  the  movement  be- 
yond polytheism  may  be  either  towards  pan- 
theism or  monotheism,  and  that  the  special 
direction  which  the  movement  takes  will  be 
determined  by  the  peculiar  form  of  the  poly- 
theism   which    forms    the    starting-point.       In 


34  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

the  Greek  mind,  which  humanised  the  gods, 
the  reaction  against  particularism  was  nat- 
urally towards  monotheism.  The  idea  of 
"  fate  "  was  therefore  conceived,  not  as  a  mere 
external  necessity,  but  as  a  rational  law,  and 
the  gods  were  regarded  as  subject  to  it  only 
in  the  sense  that  even  the  divine  nature  was 
not  beyond  law. 

The  more  firmly  the  conception  of  a  moral 
government  of  the  world  was  grasped,  the 
clearer  was  the  apprehension  of  the  apparent 
exceptions  to  it.  In  Homer  and  Hesiod,  faith 
in  divine  justice  assumes  the  simple  form  of 
a  belief  that  the  pious  man  is  directly  re- 
warded by  a  happy  and  fortunate  life.  In  the 
Odyssey  Ulysses  says,  that  when  a  king  is 
pious  and  just,  the  land  is  fruitful  and  the 
people  prosperous.  Hesiod  declares  that  on 
the  just  man,  who  keeps  his  oath,  Zeus  be- 
stows more  renown  and  a  fairer  posterity  than 
on  the  unjust.  It  was  a  popular  belief  that 
impiety  never  fails  to  be  punished  by  blind- 
ness, madness,  or  death.  To  the  objection 
that  the  innocent  were  sometimes  unfortunate, 
it   was   answered   that    they   were   involved   in 


THE   GREEK  IDEAL  35 

the  misfortunes  of  the  wicked.  The  similar 
difBculty  that  the  wicked  are  often  prosperous 
was  met  by  saying  that  divine  justice,  though 
it  may  be  deLayed,  always  overtakes  them  in 
the  end.  The  same  idea  is  expressed  in  the 
well-known  saying  of  an  unknown  poet,  that 
"  the  mills  of  the  gods  grind  slow  but  very 
small."  A  further  modification  of  the  idea 
of  divine  retribution  was  that,  though  the 
wicked  man  may  himself  escape,  misfortune  is 
sure  to  fall  upon  his  posterity.  We  also  find 
among  the  Greeks  a  growing  scepticism  of 
the  reality  of  divine  justice,  but  the  best 
minds  surmounted  this  scepticism  by  a  deeper 
view  of  the  relation  between  the  divine  and 
human,  —  a  view  which  was  most  fully  devel- 
oped by  i^schylus  and  Sophocles.  In  these 
poets,  in  fact,  the  current  religious  and  moral 
ideas  were  so  deepened  as  to  result  in  an 
ethical  monotheism,  though  they  never  con- 
sciously surrendered  the  polytheism  of  the 
popular  faith. 

^schylus,  the  poet  of  the  men  who  fought 
at  Marathon  and  Salamis,  has  unbounded  faith 
in  the  gods  of  his  country.     At  the  same  time 


36  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

his  plastic  imagination  works  freely  on  the 
mass  of  legendary  material  which  he  found 
ready  to  his  hand,  and  into  the  old  bottles 
he  pours  the  new  wine  of  a  higher  conception 
of  the  divine  nature  and  the  destiny  of  man. 
This  transforming  process  is  exhibited  in  his 
reconstruction  of  the  myth  of  Prometheus. 
Zeus,  the  representative  of  intelligence  and 
order,  when  he  has  dethroned  Chronos,  finds 
on  the  earth  the  miserable  race  of  men.  Their 
champion,  the  Titan  Prometheus,  steals  "  the 
flashing  fire,  mother  of  all  arts,"  and  conveys 
it  to  men  in  a  hollow  reed.  For  his  insolence 
and  deceit  he  must  undergo  proportional  pun- 
ishment, until  he  has  repented  and  submitted 
to  the  sovereign  will  of  Zeus.  Suffering  but 
intensifies  his  proud  and  rebellious  spirit,  and 
it  is  only  after  long  ages  of  punishment,  and 
through  the  influence  of  Heracles,  the  god- 
like man,  whose  life  has  been  spent  in  toil  for 
others,  that  he  is  at  last  induced  to  give  up 
his  purpose  of  revenge.  There  seems  little 
doubt  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  ^schylus  seeks 
to  show  that  the  world  is  governed  with  abso- 
lute justice,  and  that  the  true  lesson  of  life  is 


THE  GREEK  IDEAL  37 

to  submit  to  the  divine  will.  When  man  sets 
up  his  own  rebellious  will  against  the  Ruler 
of  the  universe,  he  must  expect  divine  pun- 
ishment. The  triple  Fates  and  the  mindful 
Erinyes  jealously  guard  the  sanctity  of  the 
primal  ties.  The  doom  of  Troy  is  the  divine 
punishment  for  violated  hospitality.  Aga- 
memnon perishes  because  his  hands  are 
stained  with  his  daughter's  blood,  ^schy- 
lus  explicitly  rejects  the  old  doctrine  of  the 
envy  of  the  gods :  it  is  sinful  rebellion  against 
the  divine  law  which  brings  punishment  in 
its  train.  The  sins  of  the  fathers  are  no  doubt 
visited  upon  the  children,  but  the  curse  never 
falls  upon  those  whose  hands  are  pure.  The 
house  of  Atreus  seems  the  prey  of  a  malign, 
inevitable  fate,  but  only  because  in  each  new 
representative  there  is  a  frenzy  of  wickedness, 
an  infatuate  hardening;  of  the  heart.  When, 
therefore,  a  pure  scion  of  this  accursed  stock 
appears,  the  curse  is  removed  :  he  suffers  in- 
deed, but  his  end  is  peace ;  and  at  last  he 
returns  in  honour  to  reign  over  the  house 
which  he  has  cleansed.  Thus  the  Erinyes 
become  the   Eumenides:  the  stern  law  of  jus- 


38  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

tice  turns  at  last  a  gracious  face  to  those  who 
fear  and  honour  the  gods. 

But,  while  yEschylus  conceives  of  Zeus  as 
the  divine  representative  of  the  whole  order 
of  society,  the  divine  law  is  still  conceived  by 
him  as  an  external  law  to  which  man  must 
submit.  Sophocles,  on  the  other  hand,  while 
he  endorses  the  conception  of  a  divine  law  of 
justice,  seeks  to  show  that  this  law  operates 
in  man  as  the  law  of  his  own  reason.  CEdipus 
unwittingly  violates  the  sacred  bond  of  the 
family,  and  punishment  inevitably  follows;  but 
his  punishment  is  also  the  recoil  upon  himself 
of  his  defiant  self-assertion,  and  therefore,  when 
he  recognises  that  his  suffering  was  not  un- 
merited, he  is  at  last  reconciled  to  the  divine 
will  and  comes  to  harmony  with  himself.  Yet 
even  in  Sophocles  the  limitation  of  the  Greek 
ideal  of  life  is  manifest;  for,  though  he  views 
suffering  as  a  means  of  purification  from  self- 
assertion  and  overweening  pride,  he  docs  not 
reach  the  conception  that  in  self-sacrifice  the 
true  nature  of  man  is  revealed ;  the  highest 
point  to  which  he  attains  is  the  conception 
that   man   can    reach    happiness    only   by   vol- 


THE   GREEK  IDEAL  39 

untary  submission  to  the  divine  will,  which 
is  also  the  law  of  his  own  reason.  It  is  only 
in  Euripides  that  we  find  something  like  an 
anticipation  of  the  Christian  idea  that  self- 
realisation  is  attained  through  self-sacrifice. 
In  Euripides,  however,  this  result  is  reached 
by  a  surrender  of  his  faith  in  the  divine  justice. 
Man,  he  seems  to  say,  is  capable  of  heroic 
self-sacrifice  at  the  prompting  of  natural  affec- 
tion, but  this  is  the  law  of  human  nature,  not 
of  the  divine  nature.  Thus  in  him  morality  is 
divorced  from  religion,  and  therefore  there  is 
over  all  his  work  the  sadness  which  inevitably 
follows  from  a  sceptical  distrust  of  the  exist- 
ence of  any  objective  principle  of  goodness. 
This  division  of  religion  and  morality  could 
not  be  final,  and  hence  the  attempts  of  Plato 
and  Aristotle  to  restore  the  broken  harmony 
by  a  higher  conception  of  the  divine  nature. 
Though  the  transformation  of  the  Greek 
religion  by  the  great  poets  of  Greece  was  a 
continuous  movement  towards  a  more  spiritual 
view  of  the  divine  nature,  it  did  not  involve 
an  explicit  breach  with  polytheism,  except 
in    the    case    of    Euripides.      yEschylus    and 


40  THE  CHRFSTIAN  WEAL    OF  LIFE 

Sophocles,  though  they  virtually  affirm  the 
unity  and  spirituality  of  the  divine  will,  are 
not  in  conscious  antagonism  to  the  popular 
faith.  Such  an  antagonism  was,  however,  in- 
evitable, so  soon  as  philosophical  reflection 
arose,  and  proceeded  to  ask  how  far  mythology 
could  be  accepted  as  historical  truth.  The 
question  could  not  be  raised  without  pro- 
ducing a  temporary  scepticism.  The  first 
philosophers  were  therefore  almost  entirely 
nesfative  in  their  attitude  towards  the  tradi- 
tional  faith. *"  It  was  only  with  Socrates  and 
his  followers  that  a  perception  of  the  rational 
element  implied  in  mythology  was  appre- 
hended. Hence,  while  Plato  is  severe  in  his 
condemnation  of  the  unworthy  representa- 
tions of  the  divine  nature  in  Homer  and 
Hesiod,  he  recosfnises  that  the  imaoi native 
form  which  that  faith  assumed  was  a  neces- 
sary stage  in  the  education  of  the  race  and 
of  the  individual.  Poetry  is  a  "  lie,"  no 
doubt,  l3ut  it  is  a  "  noble  lie."  Plato  is 
here   seeking   to   separate    the   form   from   the 

*  "Whether  there  are  gods  or  not  T   cannot  tell,"  said  Protagoras; 
"  life  is  too  short  for  such  obscure  problems." 


THE  GREEK  IDEAL  4 1 

matter,  the  spirit  from  the  earthly  tabernacle 
in  which  it  is  enclosed.  The  divine,  as  he 
contends,  is  not  immoral,  malicious,  or  de- 
ceitful. What  he  is  really  seeking  to  show  is 
that  the  divine  nature  transcends  the  sensible, 
and  is  the  ultimate  source  of  all  truth,  beauty, 
and  goodness.  Plato  does  not,  in  the  first 
instance,  reject  the  pictorial  representations 
of  the  popular  imagination,  which  he  no  doubt 
regarded  as  inseparable  from  the  poetic  garb 
endeared  to  the  Greek  heart  by  the  hallowing 
associations  of  ages ;  but  he  insists  that  the 
gods  must  not  be  portrayed  as  violating  the 
sanctities  of  moral  law,  as  inflicting  evil  upon 
man  from  envy,  or  as  appearing  in  lower 
forms.  The  gods  are  absolutely  good,  truth- 
ful, and  beautiful,  and  therefore  are  eternally 
and  unchangeably  the  same.  It-  is  obvious, 
however,  that  Plato  does  not  at  bottom  believe 
that  the  divine  nature  can  be  represented  in 
sensible  form  at  all,  and  hence  we  cannot  be 
surprised  that,  with  his  imperfect  theory  of 
art  as  an  "  imitation  "  of  sensible  reality,  the 
more  he  reflects  upon  the  distorting  influence 
of  all  imaginative  representations  of  the  divine 


42  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

nature,  the  more  dissatisfied  he  becomes,  until 
at  last  he  concludes,  though  with  great  re- 
luctance, that  there  is  no  place  for  the  poet 
in  that  ideal  city  of  which  he  dreamed  such 
beautiful,  philosophical  dreams.  The  prepara- 
tion for  this  extreme  view  is  already  made 
in  the  contention  that  poetry  is  a  "lie,"  even 
if  it  is  a  "  noble  lie,"  and  in  the  denial  that 
evil  can  in  any  sense  proceed  from  God,  or 
that  the  divine  can  ever  be  manifested  except 
in  its  own  absolutely  perfect  form.  For  the 
representation  of  what  is  false,  though  it  may 
be  necessary  as  an  educational  device,  has  no 
ultimate  justification ;  the  Manichean  separa- 
tion of  evil  from  the  divine  is  at  the  same  time 
the  exclusion  of  God  from  the  actual  world ; 
and  the  only  perfect  form  of  the  divine  must 
be  the  supersensible.  Thus,  by  the  natural 
development  of  Greek  thought,  Plato  is  at 
last  led  to  maintain  a  spiritual  monotheism,  re- 
sembling in  its  main  features  the  conception 
of  God,  which  by  an  independent  path  was 
reached  by  the  Hebrew  people  in  the  later 
stages  of  their  history.  In  his  revolt  from 
the  pictorial  representations  of  the  divine,  he 


THE  GREEK  IDEAL  43 

is  led  to  conceive  of  God  as  dwelling  in  a 
transcendent  region  beyond  the  actual  world, 
and  this,  though  a  necessary  step  in  the 
evolution  of  the  religious  consciousness,  is 
not  the  last  word  of  religion.  The  Infinite 
cannot  be  severed  from  the  finite,  God  from 
man,  without  becoming  itself  finite,  unless  we 
are  prepared  to  regard  the  finite  as  pure  illu- 
sion. Nor  does  Aristotle,  though  he  protests 
against  the  Platonic  separation  of  the  real 
and  the  ideal,  succeed  in  avoiding  the  rock 
on  which  Plato's  philosophy  of  religion  makes 
shipwreck ;  for  he  too  conceives  of  God  as  a 
purely  contemplative  being,  alone  with  Him- 
self, and  self-sufficient  in  His  isolation,  who 
acts  upon  the  world  only  as  the  sculptor  hews 
and  shapes  the  block  of  marble,  which  can 
never  be  quite  divested  of  its  material  gross- 
ness. 

If  this  is  at  all  a  fair  account  of  the  the- 
ology of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  we  must  admit 
that  their  solutions  are  not  final.  The  ne2:a- 
tive  movement  by  which  the  creations  of  art 
and  the  products  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness   in    its    imaginative  form    have    been  re- 


44  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

jected,  and  the  first  unquestioning  faith  in 
the  outward  manifestation  of  reason  in  nature 
and  human  Hfe  "  sickHed  o'er  with  the  pale 
cast  of  thought,"  is  only  imperfectly  supple- 
mented by  a  positive  movement  in  which 
the  real  is  virtually  declared  to  lie  beyond 
the  actual.  For,  so  long  as  the  world  of 
our  experience  is  regarded  as  containing  an 
irrational  element,  the  human  spirit  must 
either  fall  back  baffled  upon  the  phenomenal, 
or  seek  to  fly  beyond  the  "  flaming  walls  of 
the  world  "  by  some  other  organ  than  reason. 
It  is,  therefore,  not  surprising  that  Plato 
and  Aristotle  were  succeeded,  on  the  one 
hand  by  the  individualistic  philosophies  of 
the  Stoics,  Epicureans,  and  Sceptics,  and  on 
the  other  hand  by  the  Neo-platonists  and 
Gnostics,  who  in  despair  of  reason  took  ref- 
uge in  a  supposed  "  immediate  intuition "  or 
"  ecstasy." 


CHAPTER    III 

THE    JEWISH    IDEAL 

The  religion  of  Greece,  as  we  have  seen, 
developed  from  a  humanistic  polytheism, 
through  the  influence  of  its  great  poets  and 
philosophers,  into  monotheism.  Even  in  its 
polytheistic  stage  there  was  a  marked  ten- 
dency towards  unity,  but  this  tendency  was 
not  realised  until  Plato  affirmed  the  unity 
and  spirituality  of  the  divine  nature.  The 
religion  of  Israel  reached  the  same  point  by 
a  more  direct  path.  There  seems  to  be 
clear  evidence  that  Israel  had  passed  from 
a  primitive  totemism  to  the  worship  of 
great  powers  of  nature  before  the  captivity 
in  Egypt.  Evidence  of  the  former  stage  is 
to  be  found  in  the  household  gods  or  tera- 
phim,  and  of  the  latter  in  the  early  concep- 
tion of  Jehovah  as  the  God  of  the  tempest, 
who  had   His  seat  on   Mount  Sinai.     What  is 

45 


46  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

unique  in  the  development  of  the  rehgion 
of  Israel  is  that  it  passed  without  a  break 
from  the  worship  of  nature,  to  the  worship 
of  Jehovah,  without  going  through  the  in- 
termediate stage  of  polytheism.  This  pecul- 
iarity arose  from  the  whole  character  and 
history  of  the  people.  Unlike  the  Greeks, 
the  people  of  Israel  had  no  artistic  faculty, 
and  what  nioved  them_Jll_iiature  was  not 
the  beauty  of  the  world,  but  the  tremendous 
energy  manifested  in  its  more  terrible  aspects. 
The  divine  power  they  saw  manifested  in  the 
thunder,  and  in  the  tempest  which  broke  on 
the  mountains  of  Sinai  and  rolled  across  the 
desert.  This  great  and  terrible  Lord  was, 
from  the  time  of  their  deliverance  from  ser- 
vitude in  Egypt  under  their  great  leader 
Moses,  the  common  object  of  worship  of 
all  the  tribes.  Thus  even  before  their  politi- 
cal union,  the  belief  in  Jehovah  was  the  bond 
which  kept  them  united  as  a  people,  and 
after  the  loss  of  their  national  independence 
it  kept  them  separate  and  distinct  from  all 
other  nations.  It  is  true  that,  after  their 
settlement   in   Canaan,   there  was   a   continual 


THE  JEWISH  IDEAL  47 

struggle  between  those  who  worshipped  only 
Jehovah  and  those  who  saw  no  harm  in  com- 
bining His  worship  with  that  of  other  gods; 
but  the  great  name  of  Jehovah  never  failed 
to  reunite  all  the  tribes  in  their  struo-ole  for 
independence,  and  so  to  prevent  them  from 
being  merged  in  the  surrounding  tide  of 
Canaanite  life.  And  when  the  monarchy  was 
founded,  and  the  religion  of  Jehovah  became 
the  national  religion,  the  intense  conscious- 
ness of  their  great  past  and  the  anticipation 
of  a  still  greater  future  made  it  impossible 
that  their  faith  in  Jehovah  should  ever  be 
completely  lost. 

Up  to  the  time  of  the  great  prophets,  Jeho- 
vah was  conceived  only  as  the  greatest  of 
all  gods,  the  God  of  Israel,  who  went  before 
them  in  battle  and  led  them  to  victory,  and 
who  was  pledged  to  aid  His  people  in  their 
time  of  need.  Thus  the  religious  faith  of 
Israel  was  bound  up  with  a  belief  in  the 
permanence  of  its  nationality.  It  was  the 
work  of  the  great  prophets  to  free  the  con- 
ception of  Jehovah  from  its  exclusively  na- 
tional   character.       In    effectino-    this    chanore, 


48  THE  CHRISTIAN  WEAL   OF  LIFE 

they  were  but  developing  what  was  impHcit 
in  the  conception  from  the  first.  He  who 
was  at  first  conceived  to  be  manifested  in  the 
great  and  terrible  aspects  of  nature  came  to 
be  regarded  as  raised  entirely  above  nature, 
and  the  God  of  battles  was  transformed  into 
the  God  of  holiness.  Hence,  though  Jeho- 
vah is  still  conceived  as  standingr  in  a  more 
intimate  relation  to  Israel  than  to  other  na- 
tions, it  is  maintained  that  this  relation  can 
continue  only  if  Israel  is  pre-eminent  in 
righteousness.  "  You  only  have  I  known  of 
all  the  families  of  the  earth,  therefore  I  will 
punish  you  for  all  your  iniquities."  Israel 
must  no  longer  regard  herself  as  secure  of 
the  divine  favour,  irrespective  of  her  conduct: 
if  she  continues  to  dishonour  Jehovah,  her 
nationality  will  be  destroyed.  This  is  the 
idea  which  Isaiah  insists  upon  with  such 
fervour  and  power.  Even  when  the  king- 
doms of  Judah  and  Israel  were  in  the  full 
tide  of  prosperity,  the  prophet  discovered  in 
them  the  seeds  of  decay.  The  upper  class 
was  materialised,  and  the  lower  class  full  of 
superstition    and    practical    unbelief.     The   re- 


THE  JEWISH  IDEAL  49 

suit  was  inevitable:  their  cities  will  be  wasted 
and  the  land  left  desolate,  though,  as  the 
prophet  believes,  there  will  always  be  a  rem- 
nant to  form  the  nucleus  of  a  new  and  re- 
generate nation.  Jehovah  will  employ  the 
great  heathen  powers  as  an  instrument  for 
the  punishment  of  Israel.  A  people  who 
fail  in  the  practice  of  justice  and  mercy 
cannot  hope  for  the  favour  of  a  righteous 
and  holy  God. 

It  is  obvious  that  in  this  new  conception 
the  old  idea  of  Jehovah  as  the  God  only  of 
Israel  has  been  virtually  transcended.  Ac- 
cordingly the  prophets  deny  that  there  is  any 
God  but  Jehovah,  and,  therefore,  declare  that 
He  has  relations  to  other  nations  as  well  as 
to  Israel.  He  governs  the  world,  not  in  the 
interests  of  one  nation  only,  but  in  the  in- 
terests of  righteousness.  He  is  the  Creator 
of  all  things,  and  the  Ruler  of  the  universe, 
though  He  has  specially  revealed  Himself  to 
Israel. 

In  the  later  prophets  a  further  advance  is 
made.  Jehovah  is  not  only  the  God  of  na- 
tions, but    He  is  directly  related  to  the   indi- 


50  THE  CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

vidual  soul.  This  advance  followed  as  a 
natural  consequence  of  the  conception  of 
God  as  a  God  of  righteousness.  A  God  who 
is  beyond  nature,  and  is  essentially  spiritual, 
cannot  be  permanently  conceived  as  related 
only  to  the  nation.  Holiness  depends  upon 
the  inner  state  of  the  soul,  and  therefore  the 
relation  of  man  to  God  is  a  personal  one. 
Hence  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  assert  personal 
responsibility.  "  Every  one  shall  die  for  his 
own  iniquity,"  says  Jeremiah ;  and  Ezekiel 
declares  that  "  the  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall 
die." 

With  the  conception  of  God  as  absolutely 
holy,  and  the  demand  for  perfect  purity  of 
heart  and  conduct,  there  arose  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  opposition  between  the  finite  and 
the  infinite,  the  actual  and  the  ideal.  Thus 
the  religion  of  Israel,  unlike  the  Greek,  is  a 
religion  of  prophecy.  The  prophet,  main- 
taining that  man  was  originally  made  "a  little 
lower  than  God,"  and  contrasting  with  this 
perfect  relation  his  present  sinfulness,  looks 
forward  to  a  time  when  the  unity  with  God 
which  has  been  lost  shall  be  restored. 


THE  JEWISH  IDEAL  5  i 

The  higher  conception  of  religion  and  mo- 
raHty  taught  by  the  prophets  was  not  imme- 
diately accepted  by  the  people,  though  the 
successive  reforms  narrated  in  the  histories 
show  that  it  had  commended  itself  to  the 
best  minds.  It  was  only  with  the  exile  that 
the  people  obtained  a  firm  grasp  of  the  idea 
that  they  were  the  custodians  of  the  one 
true  religion.  This  conviction  finds  its  most 
perfect  expression  in  the  second  Isaiah,  who 
declares  that  the  peculiar  mission  of  Israel  is 
to  make  known  the  true  God  to  the  heathen. 
There  will  always  be  a  faithful  "  remnant " 
entirely  devoted  to  the  service  of  Jehovah, 
who,  even  if  they  suffer  for  the  sins  of  others, 
will  be  the  means  of  leading  many  to  right- 
eousness. 

With  the  cessation  of  the  fresh  spring  of 
prophetic  utterance,  the  Jewish  conception  of 
God  tended  to  become  more  and  more  ab- 
stract. The  way  was  prepared  for  this  change 
by  the  formation,  under  Ezra  and  Nehemiah, 
of  a  sort  of  theocratic  commonwealth,  a  com- 
pact and  homogeneous  little  state,  devoted 
mainly  to  the  worship  of  Jehovah.     With  the 


52  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

establishment  of  this  community,  the  separa- 
tion of  Israel  from  the  rest  of  the  world, 
and  the  subsequent  worship  of  the  letter  of 
scripture,  were  inevitable.  Jerusalem  became 
the  universally  acknowledged  centre  of  the 
religion  and  worship  of  Jehovah,  to  which 
from  time  to  time  Israelites  from  all  parts 
of  the  earth  flocked  to  offer  sacrifice  in  the 
temple.  Though  this  centralisation  of  sacri- 
ficial worship  was  a  bond  of  union  to  the 
despised  race,  it  was  not  effective  as  a  na- 
tional bond,  while  on  the  other  hand  it  was 
hostile  to  the  wider  bond  of  humanity.  Indi- 
rectly, the  centralisation  of  worship  in  Jeru- 
salem gave  rise  to  the  institution  of  the 
synagogue.  This  change  had  important  con- 
sequences. Religion  became  no  longer  merely 
national,  but  individual.  The  most  beauti- 
ful flower  of  this  personal  religion  was  its 
sacred  lyrical  poetry.  Many  of  the  psalms, 
most  of  which  are  admitted  to  belono-  to  the 
centuries  after  the  exile,  express  the  pure  and 
pious  feeling  called  forth  by  the  reading  of 
the  Law  and  the  prophets  in  the  synagogue. 
There   was,   however,  another   consequence   of 


THE  JEWISH  WEAL  53 

the  change.  The  importance  of  the  sacer- 
dotal cultus  in  Jerusalem  receded  into  the 
background.  The  Levite  became  of  less  con- 
sequence than  the  Rabbi  skilled  in  the  Law. 
Thus  the  Law  came  to  be  the  centre  of  all 
the  thoughts  of  the  pious  Israelite.  The 
whole  education  of  the  people,  in  the  family, 
the  school,  and  the  synagogue,  was  intended 
to  make  them  a  "people  of  the  law."  No 
longer  did  Jehovah  reveal  His  will  through 
the  direct  inspiration  of  a  prophet.  A  final 
revelation  of  Himself  had  been  given  in  the 
Law,  and  the  sole  duty  of  His  people  was  to 
find  out  by  a  careful  examination  of  the  words 
of  Scripture  what  had  been  revealed  once 
for  all.  Shut  out  from  the  direct  conscious- 
ness of  God,  the  conception  of  His  nature 
became  more  and  more  abstract.  He  was 
"the  Holy  One,"  the  "Absolute,"  raised  to 
an  infinite  distance  above  the  world  and  man, 
even  to  name  whom  was  profane.  Religion 
thus  came  to  be  regarded,  not  as  the  com- 
munion of  man  with  God,  but  as  the  rioht 
relation  of  man  before  God.  The  Law  took 
the  place  formerly  occupied    by   God.      It  is 


54  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

identified  with  the  eternal  wisdom,  which 
arose  from  the  unknown  depths  of  the  divine 
nature ;  it  is  the  image  or  daughter  of  God, 
which  was  before  the  creation  of  the  world, 
and  in  the  contemplation  of  which  the  divine 
life  is  passed.  As  expressing  the  whole  nature 
of  God,  the  Law  is  the  ultimate  revelation, 
valid  for  all  time  and  even  for  eternity ;  it  is 
the  true  food  of  the  soul,  the  tree  of  life,  the 
source  of  all  knowledge.  The  essence  of  re- 
ligion, therefore,  consists  in  love  of  the  Law, 
as  exhibited  in  its  study  and  in  observance  of 
its  precepts.  Thus  the  Law  at  once  unites 
Israel  to  Jehovah,  and  separates  her  from 
the  whole  heathen  world,  which  by  its  rejec- 
tion of  the  Law  at  Sinai  adopted  a  hostile 
attitude  toward  Jehovah. 

As  conformity  to  the  Law  was  the  standard 
and  source  of  all  righteousness,  God  was 
bound  by  the  terms  of  the  covenant  entered 
into  with  Israel  to  recompense  the  pious 
Israelite  in  proportion  to  his  observance  of 
its  precepts.  As  this  proportion  was  not 
always  observed,  it  was  held  that  at  some 
future    time    the    balance    would    be    restored. 


THE  JEWISH  IDEAL  55 

The  whole  religious  life  thus  revolved  around 
these  two  poles,  —  conformity  to  the  Law  and 
the  hope  of  future  reward.  Under  such  a 
purely  external  conception,  religion  and  mo- 
rality were  emptied  of  life.  For  that  free 
and  spontaneous  devotion  to  goodness  which 
is  of  the  very  essence  of  the  spiritual  life,  was 
substituted  the  mechanical  observance  of  rules 
imposed  by  external  authority.  The  Law  was 
to  be  obeyed,  not  because  it  expressed  the 
true  nature  of  man,  but  because  it  had  been 
ordained  by  Him  who  had  power  to  reward 
and  punish.  As  its  various  precepts  were 
not  seen  to  flow  from  any  principle,  the 
moral  life  was  conceived  to  consist  in  strict 
obedience  to  every  detail  of  the  Law.  Where 
all  was  equally  imposed  by  God,  every  require- 
ment of  the  Law  had  the  same  absolute  claim 
to  obedience.  Thus  there  was,  in  St.  PauFs 
phrase,  "  a  zeal  for  God,  but  not  according  to 
knowledge."  To  the  conscientious  Israelite, 
life  was  made  an  intolerable  burden,  while  the 
rigid  adherent  of  the  Law  could  hardly  escape 
from  a  proud  and  boastful  self-righteousness. 
The  logical   consequences  of  this   legalistic 


56  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

religion  and  morality  are  most  clearly  seen 
in  the  life  and  theory  of  the  Pharisees,  who 
carried  out  to  its  extreme  the  spirit  which 
rules  the  whole  post-exilic  period.  It  has 
sometimes  been  said  that  the  Pharisees  were 
the  patriotic  party,  as  contrasted  with  the  Sad- 
ducees,  who  were  always  ready  to  sacrifice  their 
country  and  even  the  national  religion  from 
motives  of  worldly  prudence.  It  would  seem, 
however,  that  the  main  spring  of  action  in  the 
Pharisees  was  not  love  of  country,  but  love  of 
the  Law.  And  by  the  Law  they  meant,  not 
so  much  the  written  as  the  "  oral  "  law,  which 
had  been  gradually  formed  by  the  labours  of 
the  scribes.  "  The  Pharisees,^'  says  Josephus, 
"have  imposed  upon  the  people  many  laws 
taken  from  the  tradition  of  the  fathers,  which 
are  not  written  in  the  Law  of  Moses."  Such 
an  extension  of  the  Law  was  inevitable.  A  law 
accepted  upon  authority  necessarily  gives  rise 
to  casuistry,  the  moment  an  attempt  is  made 
to  make  it  a  complete  guide  of  life ;  and  the 
precedents  thus  established  naturally  come  to 
be  regarded  as  an  unfolding  of  what  is  already 
contained    in    the    law.      What    distinguished 


THE  JEWISH  IDEAL  57 

the  Pharisees  was  their  claim  to  pecuHar 
strictness  in  the  interpretation  and  observance 
of  the  Law,  or  rather  of  the  "  traditions  of  the 
fathers,"  and  especially  of  the  laws  relating  to 
cleanness  and  uncleanness.  They  regarded 
themselves  as  the  true  Israel,  in  distinction 
not  only  from  the  heathen,  but  from  the  less 
scrupulous  of  their  own  countrymen.  That  ex- 
cessive zeal  for  the  letter  of  the  Law  was  their 
ruling  motive  seems  to  be  proved  by  their 
attitude  to  successive  dynasties.  During  the 
Maccabean  conflict,  they  adopted  the  popular 
cause ;  but  when  the  insurrection  proved  suc- 
cessful, and  the  Asmoneans  showed  indiffer- 
ence to  the  Law,  the  Pharisees  turned  against 
them.  Their  zeal  for  the  Law  won  the  people 
to  their  side,  and  henceforth  they  completely 
ruled  the  public  life.  Even  the  direction  of 
public  worship  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Phari- 
sees, though  the  priestly  Sadducees  were 
nominally  the  head  of  the  Sanhedrim.  The 
Sadducees  were  the  wealthy,  aristocratic  party, 
and  therefore  belonged  mainly  to  the  priest- 
hood, which,  as  far  back  as  the  Persian  period, 
governed    the    Jewish    state    and    formed    its 


58  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

nobility.  They  differed  from  the  Pharisees 
in  acknowledging  only  the  Pentateuch  and 
the  prophets  as  binding,  to  the  exclusion  of 
the  whole  mass  of  legal  decisions  which  had 
been  established  by  the  Pharisaic  scribes. 
The  Sadducees  held  fast  by  the  older  faith, 
mainly  because  they  were  averse  to  the  big- 
otry and  exclusiveness  of  the  Pharisees.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  their  position  as  men  of 
affairs,  and  their  contact  with  foreign  culture, 
had  made  them  comparatively  indifferent  to 
the   religion  of  their  fathers. 

The  Messianic  hopes  of  the  Pharisees 
were  the  natural  complement  of  their  legal- 
ism. They  believed  that,  in  terms  of  the 
covenant  made  at  Sinai,  God  was  bound  to 
reward  those  who  obeyed  the  Law,  and  there- 
fore that  the  political  and  individual  evils  to 
which  the  saints  were  subjected  could  only 
be  temporary.  They  therefore  looked  for- 
ward to  a  time  when  the  whole  world  would 
be  united  under  the  sceptre  of  Israel  into  a 
universal  monarchy,  over  which  the  Messiah 
should  be  ruler  and  judge.  In  this  glorious 
era,    the    pious    individual    would    also    be    re- 


THE  JEWISH  IDEAL  59 

warded.  The  general  belief  was  in  a  "  res- 
urrection of  the  just,"  though  some  also 
expected  a  general  resurrection,  when  the 
wicked  should  be  punished  and  the  right- 
eous rewarded.  The  reign  of  the  saints  was 
to  be  ushered  in  by  the  direct  intervention 
of  God,  when  the  rule  of  Satan  and  his 
angels  should  give  place  to  the  rule  of  God 
and  His  anointed.  The  Messiah,  the  Kino- 
of  Israel,  chosen  by  God  from  all  eternity, 
should  come  down  from  heaven,  where  He 
was  already  in  communion  with  God,  and 
establish  upon  earth  the  reign  of  righteous- 
ness and  peace.  While  this  was  the  form 
which  the  Messianic  hope  assumed  in  the 
minds  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  there 
were  not  wanting  men  of  a  finer  type,  in 
whose  minds  it  was  accompanied  by  the  ex- 
pectation of  the  triumph  of  good  over  evil, 
and  of  the  deliverance  of  man  from  the  evil 
of  his  own  heart.  A  consideration  of  the  atti- 
tude of  Jesus  toward  the  Law  and  the  Mes- 
sianic hopes  of  his  time  will  help  to  bring 
out  the  distinctive  features  of  the  Christian, 
as  distinguished  from  the  Jewish,  ideal  of  life. 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE    CHRISTIAN    IDEAL 

The  first  step  toward  the  overthrow  of 
the  whole  set  of  legahstic  ideas,  character- 
istic of  later  Judaism,  was  taken  by  John 
the  Baptist.  It  is  true  that  the  Baptist  did 
not  break  with  the  legal  piety  of  his  time, 
but  his  watchword,  "  Repent,  for  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  is  at  hand,"  was  in  essence 
a  denial  of  the  principle  upon  which  legal- 
ism rested.  For,  according  to  that  principle, 
the  delay  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  was  not 
due  to  the  unrighteousness  of  Israel,  but  to 
the  inscrutable  designs  of  providence,  which 
permitted  Satan  with  his  host  of  angels  to 
afflict  the  saints  and  deprive  them  of  the 
reward  to  which  their  diligent  observance 
of  the  Law  entitled  them.  The  reign  of  the 
saints    could    only  come  with    the   miraculous 

advent  of   the  Messiah.     The  Baptist,  on  the 

60 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  6 1 

other  hand,  found  the  explanation  of  the 
delay  in  the  manifestation  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  in  the  sinfulness  of  men,  not  in 
the  inscrutable  designs  of  God.  Hence  he 
called  for  repentance,  and,  by  demanding 
from  every  one  a  confession  of  sin,  he  vir- 
tually denied  that  the  Pharisees  were  justi- 
fied in  regarding  themselves  as  righteous. 
The  evils  from  which  men  suffered  were 
not  due  to  the  malevolence  of  evil  spirits, 
but  to  their  own  corrupt  hearts.  No  doubt 
the  blessings  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
could  only  come  from  above,  but  only  those 
need  hope  to  participate  in  them  who  were 
conscious  of  the  evil  of  their  own  hearts,  and 
sought  the  righteousness  of  God.  The  king- 
dom of  heaven  was  at  hand,  and  the  neces- 
sary preparation  for  it  was  a  "  change  of 
mind." 

The  effect  of  this  message  upon  the  Phari- 
sees could  only  be  to  arouse  their  indigna- 
tion and  rancour ;  for,  in  demanding  from 
all  a  confession  of  sin  and  a  change  of  heart, 
the  Baptist  struck  a  powerful  blow  at  their 
self-righteousness    and    spiritual     pride ;    and, 


62  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

in  virtually  affirming  that  righteousness  did 
not  consist  in  the  scrupulous  observance  of 
the  Law,  he  denied  the  very  foundation  upon 
which  they  based  their  expectation  of  future 
reward.  To  those  finer  spirits,  on  the  other 
hand,  who  were  painfully  conscious  of  their 
own  weakness  and  sinfulness,  the  preaching 
of  the  Baptist  came  as  a  welcome  solution 
of  their  spiritual  perplexities,  and  helped  to 
restore  their  faith  in  the  justice  of  God. 

Among  those  who  at  once  discerned  the 
significance  of  the  Baptist's  summons  to 
repentance  was  Jesus,  who  submitted  to  bap- 
tism, as  a  sign  of  his  belief  in  the  funda- 
mental truth  of  John's  doctrine,  and,  indeed, 
in  the  beginning  of  his  ministry,  adopted  as 
his  own  the  watchword,  "  Repent,  for  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand."  But,  while 
Jesus  thus  endorsed  the  new  way  of  right- 
eousness, it  soon  became  evident  that  he 
gave  to  it  another  and  a  deeper  meaning. 
In  the  Beatitudes  this  new  point  of  view  is 
already  indicated.  Repentance  is  by  the  Bap- 
tist conceived  as  the  moral  preparation  for  a 
deliverance    from    evil    which    is   still    future; 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  63 

by  Jesus  it  is  regarded  as  consisting  in  a 
personal  consciousness  of  the  infinite  love  of 
God.  Thus  the  moral  revolution  is  insepar- 
able from  the  religious.  The  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  already  present  in  the  souls  of 
those  who  have  an  absolute  faith  in  the 
goodness  of  God,  a  faith  which  finds  expres- 
sion in  unselfish  devotion  to  their  fellow-men, 
and  which  rejoices  in  revilings  and  persecu- 
tions as  the  process  through  which  goodness 
gradually  overcomes  evil. 

The  ideal  of  life  which  is  indicated  in  the 
Beatitudes  was  an  entire  reversal  of  the  cur- 
rent conception,  especially  as  it  had  been 
formulated  in  the  teaching  of  the  scribes 
and  Pharisees.  Even  the  method  of  exposi- 
tion was  new;  for,  whereas  the  accepted 
teachers  in  all  cases  sought  to  deduce  con- 
clusions from  the  letter  of  scripture,  by  a 
laborious  and  ingenious  system  of  exegesis, 
Jesus  threw  out  his  ideas  in  the  form  of 
aphorisms,  which  shone  by  their  own  light. 
And  if  his  method  was  thus  free  and  un- 
conventional, how  much  more  revolutionary 
seemed  to  be  the  substance  of   his  teaching ! 


64  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OE  LIEE 

Ignoring  the  authority  of  the  Law  and  the 
prophets,  he  seemed  to  assert  an  independent 
basis  for  the  new  truth  which  he  proclaimed, 
and,  in  making  righteousness  consist  entirely 
in  a  spiritual  regeneration,  he  apparently 
despised  the  whole  body  of  truth  which 
had.  been  revealed  by  God  himself  to  Moses 
and  the  prophets.  It  was,  therefore,  charged 
against  him  that,  in  abrogating  the  Law,  he 
was  destroying  the  very  foundation  of  relig- 
ion and  morality.  The  objection  is  one 
which  never  fails  to  be  made  when  the  princi- 
ple of  external  authority  is  attacked.  When 
Socrates  sought  to  trace  back  the  customary 
religious  and  moral  ideas  of  his  time  to  their 
principle,  he  was  accused  of  denying  the  gods 
of  his  country,  and  corrupting  the  minds  of 
the  youth  ;  and  the  similar  charge  was  brought 
against  St.  Paul,  that  in  destroying  the  au- 
thority of  the  Law,  he  was  virtually  the 
advocate  of  licentiousness  and  impiety.  The 
answer  of  Jesus  was,  that  so  far  from  abro- 
gating the  Mosaic  law  he  "fulfilled"  it;  i.e, 
brought  to  light  the  principle  which  gave  it 
its  binding  force.     The   Law,  as  he  contends. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  65 

is  of  eternal  obligation,  and  cannot  be  abol- 
ished so  lono^  as  heaven  and  earth  endure. 
"  Think  not  that  I  came  to  destroy  the  law 
and  the  prophets;  I  came  not  to  destroy  but 
to  fulfil."  The  new  way  of  life  does  not 
abolish  the  Law,  but  shows  that  it  cannot  be 
abolished.  On  the  other  hand,  the  old  way 
of  basing  it  upon  external  authority  and  cus- 
tom destroys  its  very  foundation.  The  source 
of  all  morality  is  to  be  found,  not  in  the  ex- 
ternal act,  but  in  the  inner  spirit  from  which 
the  act  proceeds,  and  when  this  is  once  seen 
it  becomes  evident  that  the  legalism  of  the 
scribes  and  Pharisees  is  antagonistic  to  any 
genuine  morality. 

The  Law  which  is  thus  declared  to  be  eter- 
nal and  indestructible  is  the  Law  in  its  moral, 
as  distinguished  from  its  ceremonial,  part. 
It  is  the  Law  as  interpreted  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  prophets.  This  distinction  of 
the  ethical  from  the  ceremonial  part  of  the 
Law  is  of  itself  an  important  advance.  It  is 
a  distinction  which  could  have  no  meaning 
for  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  who  had  no 
criterion  by  which    to  separate  between  what 


66  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

was  based  upon  the  unchanging  nature  of 
man  and  what  held  good  only  under  special 
circumstances  and  at  a  given  stage  in  the 
development  of  humanity.  For,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  law  which  is  accepted  purely  upon 
authority,  is  all  equally  binding.  But  this  is 
not  all ;  for  not  only  does  Jesus  distinguish 
the  ethical  from  the  ceremonial  part  of  the 
Law,  but  he  goes  back  beyond  the  traditional 
morality  of  his  day  to  the  fundamental  moral 
ideas  expressed  in  the  Law  and  the  prophets, 
and  disengages  the  principle  upon  which 
they  rest.  Thus  he  is  enabled  to  grasp  the 
Law  in  its  purity  and  universality,  and  to 
contrast  it  with  the  unspiritual  interpretations 
of  the  scribes. 

Take,  e.g.  the  command :  "  Thou  shalt 
not  kill."  The  scribes,  in  accordance  with 
their  usual  conception  of  morality  as  a  sys- 
tem of  external  rewards  and  punishments, 
add  the  gloss:  "Whosoever  shall  kill,  shall 
be  in  danger  of  the  judgment."  The  sanc- 
tion of  the  Law  is  thus  made  to  consist, 
not  in  the  sacredncss  of  human  life,  but  in 
the    fear    of    punishment    here    or    hereafter. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  67 

The  principle  upon  which  the  Law  is  based 
is  therefore  destroyed.  The  appeal  is  to  a 
purely  selfish  motive,  and  with  that  appeal 
the  whole  moral  aspect  of  the  Law  disap- 
pears. Jesus,  on  the  other  hand,  insists  that 
the  command  rests  upon  the  purely  moral 
principle  of  love,  and  that  the  Law  is  vio- 
lated in  its  essence,  not  merely  in  this  ex- 
treme expression  of  hatred,  but  in  hatred  in 
all  its  forms,  or  rather  in  that  evil  disposi- 
tion which  is  the  source  of  all  hatred.  The 
outward  act  has  no  moral  meanins^  in  itself; 
murder  is  not  the  mere  taking  away  of  life, 
but  the  taking  away  of  life  from  hatred  to 
one's  fellow-man ;  and  therefore  anger,  want 
of  sympathy,  and  contempt,  as  springing  from 
the  same  corrupt  source,  the  unloving  heart, 
are  worthy  of  the  most  extreme  punishment, 
the  "hell  of  fire."  Thus  the  Law  is  seen  to 
exclude  the  whole  range  of  malevolent  pas- 
sions and  even  the  faintest  taint  of  hatred. 
Jesus  was  therefore  justified  in  saying  that 
the  righteousness  of  his  followers  must  "ex- 
ceed the  righteousness  of  the  scribes  and 
Pharisees,"    and    "exceed"    it    not    merely    in 


68  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

degree,  but  in  kind.  The  distinction,  in  fact, 
is  infinite.  The  scribes,  in  conceiving  moral- 
ity to  consist  solely  in  conformity  to  an  ex- 
ternal rule,  irrespective  of  the  motive  from 
which  the  act  proceeded,  virtually  did  away 
with  the  whole  principle  of  morality;  and,  by 
their  reduction  of  morality  to  a  system  of 
external  rewards  and  punishments,  they  vio- 
lated the  very  essence  of  morality,  which  rests 
upon  the  universal  principle  of  brotherly  love. 
To  this  it  is  added  that  morality  is  the  pre- 
requisite of  all  true  worship:  no  genuine  re- 
ligious act  can  be  performed  by  the  man  who 
nourishes  in  his  heart  a  Qfrudo^e  as^ainst  his 
neighbour.  Lastly,  Jesus  traces  back  the 
ethical  principle  of  love  to  one's  neighbour  to 
a  fundamental  identity  in  the  nature  of  God 
and  man :  hatred  brings  upon  the  man  who 
nourishes  it  its  own  punishment,  just  because 
he  is  violating  what  is  his  own  real  self;  and 
hence,  though  he  may  escape  external  punish- 
ment, he  cannot  possibly  escape  the  most  ter- 
rible of  all  punishments,  —  that  which  consists 
in  the  loss  of  the  blessedness  wliich  springs 
from  the  consciousness  of  unity  with  God. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  69 

The  same  principle  is  applied  to  other 
moral  laws ;  in  all  cases  Jesus  traces  back 
the  command  to  its  source  in  the  nature  of 
man  as  identical  in  nature  with  God.  At 
the  close  of  his  treatment  of  this  theme  he 
expands  the  principle  of  morality  so  as  to 
embrace  all  men,  and  he  elevates  it  into  in- 
finity. The  Law  had  said:  "Thou  shalt  not 
hate  thy  brother  in  thine  heart,  thou  shalt 
not  be  angry  with  the  children  of  thy  peo- 
ple, thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself 
(Lev.  xix.  17,  18)."  From  this  precept  came 
the  characteristic  Pharisaic  deduction :  "  Thou 
shalt  be  angry  with  the  stranger,  thou  shalt 
hate  thine  enemies."  Thus  national  hatred 
was  not  only  condoned,  but  was  actually  made 
a  principle  of  action,  and  surrounded  with  all 
the  sanctity  and  solemnity  of  a  divine  com- 
mand. Now  even  Plato  reached  the  concep- 
tion that  "  it  was  better  to  suffer  than  to  do 
injustice."  Jesus  goes  altogether  beyond  this 
negative  attitude.  "  Love  your  enemies,  and 
pray  for  them  that  persecute  you."  This  is, 
indeed,  a  "new  commandment."  It  is  the 
very    core  of     Christian     ethics — that    which 


70  THE  CHRISTTAN  IDEAL   OF  LTFE 

gives  it  its  superiority,  and  makes  it  incon- 
ceivable that  its  principle  can  ever  be  tran- 
scended. Moreover,  this  supreme  ethical 
principle  is  immediately  connected  with  the 
distinctively  Christian  idea  of  God,  as  the 
"Father"  of  men,  whose  love  has  absolutely 
no  limits.  As  a  symbol  of  this  all-embracing 
love,  he  "  maketh  his  sun  to  rise  on  the 
evil  and  the  good,  and  sendeth  his  rain  on 
the  just  and  the  unjust."  "Therefore,"  con- 
cludes Jesus,  "Ye  shall  be  perfect  as  your 
heavenly  Father  is  perfect";  i.e.  man,  finite 
and  sinful  as  he  is,  is  yet  capable  of  living  a 
divine  life,  of  repeating  on  an  infinitesimal 
scale  the  large  all-embracing  charity  of  his 
heavenly  "  Father." 

Jesus  has  thus  vindicated  the  "  Law  "  as  an 
expression  of  the  fundamental  moral  ideas 
which  constitute  the  soul  of.  society.  It  is 
evident,  however,  that  in  tracing  back  those 
ideas  to  their  source,  he  has  raised  them  to  a 
plane  which  was  never  dreamt  of  before ;  in 
other  words,  he  has  virtually  abolished  the 
conception  of  man  and  God  upon  which  the 
Jewish    religion    rested.      At    the    same    time 


THE  CHRISTIAN  WEAL  71 

the  new  way  of  life  is  not  an  absolute  change, 
but  a  development.  The  moral  laws  won 
for  humanity  by  the  toil  and  suffering  of  the 
Jewish  people  were  not  lost,  though  they 
underwent  expansion  and  specification  by 
the  appreciation  of  the  principle  of  universal 
brotherhood.  Of  this  double  relation  Jesus 
was  perfectly  conscious.  Hence,  while  on 
the  one  hand  he  affirms  the  eternal  obli^ra- 
tion  of  the  Law,  he  asserts  with  equal  deci- 
sion that  the  new  principle  which  he  brought 
to  light  separates  the  new  world  from  the 
old  as  by  an  impassable  barrier.  "  From  the 
days  of  John  the  Baptist  until  now  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  suffereth  violence,  and  men 
of  violence  take  it  by  force.  For  all  the 
prophets  and  the  Law  prophesied  until  John." 
The  "  kingdom  of  heaven,"  as  he  implies,  is 
for  the  first  time  revealed  as  it  is,  i.e.  as 
actually  present,  and  men  are  pressing  into 
it  now  that  it  has  been  revealed.  The 
prophets  spoke  only  of  a  future  kingdom, 
living  merely  in  the  hope  that  somehow  and 
at  some  time  God  would  brins^  about  the 
reign  of  righteousness  upon  the  earth.     Now 


72 


THE  CHRFSTTAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 


men  live  in  the  glad  consciousness  that  the 
reign  of  righteousness,  which  to  the  prophets 
seemed  afar  off,  has  actually  begun.  Hence 
Jesus  speaks  of  the  Baptist  as  having  reached 
a  higher  stage  of  truth  than  the  prophets. 
"  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  among  them  that 
are  born  of  women,  there  hath  not  arisen  a 
greater  than  John  the  Baptist."  But  he 
immediately  adds:  "Yet  he  that  is  but  little 
in  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  greater  than 
he."  So  radical  is  the  change  introduced  by 
the  new  revelation  that  it  lifts  those  who 
accept  it  to  a  higher  plane  of  truth  than  the 
Baptist,  who  still  conceived  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  as  future,  and  who  had  not  dis- 
covered the  central  truth  that  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  was  capable  of  being  realised  the 
moment  it  was  discovered  to  consist  in  an 
unlimited  love  to  God  and  man.  Thus  Jesus 
was  perfectly  aware  that  old  things  had  passed 
away,  and  all  tilings  had  become  new.  Nor 
had  he  any  doubt  of  the  absolute  truth  of  his 
own  doctrine.  "  All  things  have  been  deliv- 
ered unto  me  of  my  Father;  and  no  one 
knowcth    the    Son,    save    the    Father,    neither 


THE  CHRlSTlAISr  IDEAL  73 

doth  any  know  the  Father  save  the  Son,  and 
he  to  whomsoever  the  Son  willeth  to  reveal 
him."  The  revelation  which  he  had  to  make 
to  the  world  was  an  entirely  new  revelation. 
"  Verily  I  say  unto  you  that  many  prophets 
and  righteous  men  have  earnestly  desired  to 
see  what  ye  see,  and  have  not  seen  it,  and 
to  liear  what  ye  hear  and  have  not  heard  it." 
Yet,  while  he  declares  that  his  gospel  is  new, 
Jesus  has  too  much  insight  into  the  pre- 
sentiment of  the  truth,  which  half  consciously 
worked  in  the  highest  minds  of  the  past,  not  to 
be  aware  that  the  principle  which  he  brought 
into  the  full  light  of  day  had  been  vaguely 
felt  by  religious  men  in  all  ages.  The  princi- 
ple of  evolution  of  which  so  much  is  now  said 
has  never  been  applied  more  precisely  to  the 
development  of  religious  ideas  than  by  Jesus. 
The  ideas  of  Jesus  are  all  so  closely 
connected,  flowing  as  they  do  from  a  single 
principle,  that  it  is  impossible  to  treat  of  one 
aspect  of  his  teaching  without  some  reference 
to  the  other  aspects.  Hence  it  has  not  been 
possible  to  speak  of  his  attitude  towards  the 
Law  without  to  some  extent  anticipating  what 


74  THE  CHR/STIAJV  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

has  now  to  be  said  in  connexion  with  his  atti- 
tude to  the  Messianic  hopes  of  his  country- 
men. In  what  follows  it  will  be  advisable  to 
consider  this  question  in  relation  to  (i)  the 
general  view  of  the  scribes,  (2)  the  higher  view, 
rather  felt  than  clearly  formulated,  by  men  of  a 
more  spiritual  type.  The  points  of  agreement 
between  these  two  classes  of  mind  lay  in  the 
conviction  that  the  world  had  been  given  over 
to  wicked  men  and  to  the  machinations  of 
the  devil  and  his  angels ;  but  that  a  time  was 
coming  when  this  state  of  things  would  be 
completely  reversed,  and  a  reign  of  righteous- 
ness set  up  upon  the  earth  under  the  Messiah. 
But  while  there  was  a  general  agreement  on 
these  points,  there  was  a  radical  difference  in 
the  conception  of  "  righteousness,"  and  as  a 
consequence  in  the  conception  of  the  Messiah. 
Let  us  look  first  at  the  general  view  of  the 
scribes  and   Pharisees. 

(i)  As  we  have  already  seen,  their  dissatis- 
faction with  the  evil  of  the  present  was  closely 
connected  with  their  le<j:alistic  ideas.  To  them 
it  seemed  that,  by  the  terms  of  the  covenant 
made  between  God  and  His  own  peculiar  peo- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  75 

pie,  Israel  had  a  right  to  national  indepen- 
dence, and  even  to  sovereignty  over  all  nations, 
as  a  reward  for  her  devotion  to  Jehovah ;  or 
at  least  she  was  entitled  to  expect  this  reward 
when  she  fully  implemented  her  part  of  the 
contract.  Starting  from  this  legal  point  of 
view,  the  evil  of  the  present  was  explained  as 
flowing  from  a  failure  to  fulfil  the  terms  of  the 
covenant.  God  "does  not  exercise  His  kinsf- 
ship  to  its  full  extent,  but  on  the  contrary  ex- 
poses His  people  to  the  heathen  world-powers, 
to  chastise  them  for  their  sins."  By  "  sins  "  the 
Pharisees,  of  course,  meant  a  want  of  conform- 
ity to  the  Law.  Because  of  this  disobedience, 
pain  and  sorrow  prevailed,  and  especially 
those  mental  diseases  which  were  directly  re- 
ferred to  demoniac  possession.  For  the  same 
reason  Israel  groaned  under  the  iron  despot- 
ism of  Rome.  It  is  obvious  that  the  future 
kingdom  of  God,  which  was  to  be  ushered  in 
by  the  Messiah,  could  only  be  conceived  as 
consisting  in  the  absence  of  pain  and  suffering, 
in  dominion  over  the  heathen,  and  in  the  rule 
of  the  saints,  i.e.  of  those  who  were  rigid  in 
the  practice  of  the  Law. 


y6  THE  CHRISTTAISr  IDEAL   OF  LIEE 

Now  the  Pharisaic  ideal  of  a  kingdom  of 
heaven,  consisting  in  the  absence  of  pain  and 
suffering,  in  earthly  sovereignty,  and  in  the 
rule  of  Pharisaic  saints,  was  one  which  Jesus 
could  not  possibly  endorse.  Denying  in  limine 
the  whole  conception  upon  which  it  rested,  he 
could  admit  neither  the  Pharisaic  conception 
of  the  present,  nor  their  vulgar  ideal  of  the 
future.  The  legalistic  idea  of  a  contract  be- 
tween  God  and  Israel,  the  terms  of  which 
were  that  the  pious  Israelite  who  conformed 
to  the  letter  of  the  Law  had  a  right  to  freedom 
from  suffering  and  to  external  sovereignty,  was 
for  him  a  profoundly  immoral  and  irreligious 
conception ;  and  the  assumption  that  the  gov- 
ernment of  God  was  not  just  and  righteous 
was  to  him  blasphemous.  The  world  had 
never  ceased  to  be  the  object  of  God's  loving 
care,  and  therefore  the  coming  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  could  not  mean  a  sudden  and 
miraculous  manifestation  of  His  power.  The 
spirit  of  God  was  present  in  the  world  of 
nature  and  in  the  consciousness  of  man.  The 
obstacle  to  the  reign  of  righteousness  was  in 
the  blindness  and  sin  of  man,  not  in  God.     It 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL 


77 


was  want  of  faith,  and  the  sin  which  inevitably 
flowed  from  it,  that  explained  the  suffering 
and  evil  of  the  present. 

We  have  seen  how  Jesus  opposes  to  the 
legalism  of  the  Pharisees  his  conception  of  a 
righteousness  which  consists  in  active  efforts 
for  the  moral  purification  of  the  individual 
soul,  a  purification  which  could  proceed  only 
from  love  to  God  and  man.  Absolute  faith 
in  the  goodness  of  God  was  the  key-note  of 
all  his  teaching.  But  if,  as  Jesus  maintained, 
the  essential  nature  of  God  is  love  for  all 
creatures,  and  especially  for  man,  how  did  he 
explain  the  existence  of  suffering  and  evil  ? 
How  was  the  righteous  government  of  God 
to  be  reconciled  with  the  apparent  triumph 
of  evil  ?  The  optimism  which  shuts  its 
eyes  to  the  misery  and  wickedness  of  the 
world  was  to  him  a  false  and  delusive  creed. 
The  wretchedness  and  evil  of  man  were  only 
too  palpable.  Jesus  faced  the  facts  with  a 
perfectly  clear  consciousness  of  their  force. 
No  one  was  ever  more  sensitive  to  the  suf- 
ferings of  others  than  he ;  but  lie  refused  to 
see  in  suffering  a  proof  of  the  indifference  or 


'j^  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

injustice  of  God.  His  explanation  of  suffer- 
ing was  that  it  is  a  necessary  step  in  the 
whole  process  by  which  man  is  lifted  to  a 
higher  plane.  To  the  Pharisees  suffering 
was  the  result  of  the  want  of  obedience  to  the 
Law,  and  therefore  it  seemed  to  them  that, 
with  the  advent  of  the  Messiah,  and  the  de- 
struction of  all  who  transgressed  the  Law,  suf- 
fering would  disappear.  Jesus  also  believes 
in  the  gradual  disappearance  of  suffering,  but 
he  refuses  to  connect  it  with  external  conform- 
ity to  the  Law.  The  destruction  of  suffering 
must  come  from  the  efforts  of  loving  hearts, 
not  from  any  miraculous  change  in  the  con- 
ditions of  human  life.  Suffering  is  not,  or 
at  least  not  merely,  a  punishment  for  sin,  but 
a  divinely  ordained  means  for  calling  out  the 
higher  energies  of  the  soul. 

As  in  the  view  of  the  Pharisees  suffering 
was  the  result  of  transgression  of  the  Law,  so 
also  was  the  oppression  of  Israel  by  heathen 
powers.  Hence  they  believed  that,  when  the 
Messiah  should  come,  the  independence  of 
Israel  would  be  restored,  and  the  whole  world 
should  come  under  the  sway  of  "  the  saints." 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  79 

Now,  it  has  been  maintained  that  Jesus,  as 
an  ardent  patriot,  sliared  in  the  hopes  of  his 
countrymen,  and  looked  forward  to  the  future 
sovereignty  of  Israel.  This  view  cannot  be 
accepted.  F'or  {a)  even  if  Jesus  cherished  the 
hope  of  the  external  sovereignty  of  Israel, 
he  could  not  possibly  accept  the  ideal  of  the 
Pharisees.  An  Israel  in  which  the  whole  gov- 
ernment should  be  in  the  hands  of  "  saints " 
of  the  Pharisaic  type  was  something  too  dread- 
ful to  contemplate.  No  doubt  Jesus  was  in- 
tensely patriotic  in  the  sense  of  desiring  that 
Israel  should  be  the  leader  in  the  spiritual 
regeneration  of  the  world,  and  it  is  probable 
that  in  the  earlier  days  of  his  ministry  he 
cherished  the  hope  of  persuading  his  coun- 
trymen to  accept  the  new  revelation.  But, 
whether  this  was  so  or  not,  it  is  manifest 
that  he  came  to  see  that  the  deep-rooted 
prejudices  and  externalism  of  the  mass  of  the 
people,  and  the  malignant  opposition  of  tlie 
ruling  classes,  were  too  strong  to  be  o\'er- 
come.  Recognising  this  clearly,  it  was  im- 
possible for  him  to  believe  that  Israel  should 
be   raised   to  a   supremacy  over   the  heathen. 


8o  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

(b)  Belief  in  the  future  rule  of  Israel  was  in- 
separably connected  in  the  Jewish  mind  with 
the  advent  of  a  Messiah,  who  should  ascend 
the  throne  of  David  and  rule  over  a  subject 
world.  When,  therefore,  Jesus  admitted  to 
his  disciples  that  the  Messiah  had  already 
come  in  his  own  person,  he  plainly  acknow- 
ledged that  he  had  abandoned  the  whole  set 
of  ideas  upon  which  the  future  political  su- 
premacy of  Israel  was  based.  The  kingdom 
of  heaven  had  already  come,  and  it  was  not 
an  earthly  but  a  spiritual  kingdom.  In  this 
kingdom  he  who  was  least  was  greatest,  and 
indeed  the  spiritual  power  of  the  true  Messiah 
—  the  power  of  loving  service  —  was  contrasted 
with  the  earthly  power  which  consisted  in  rul- 
ing over  a  subject  people,  [c)  While  main- 
taining that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  has 
already  come,  Jesus  counsels  submission  to 
the  established  power  of  Rome,  showing  that 
in  his  mind  the  rule  of  righteousness  was 
not  dependent  upon  the  political  supremacy 
of  Israel.  His  answer  to  the  mother  of  Zebe- 
dee's  children  has  been  strangely  cited  as  a 
proof    that    he   looked  forward    to  the   earthly 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  8 1 

rule  of  the  "saints."  Nothing,  in  fact,  could 
more  clearly  show  that,  in  his  mind,  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  was  entirely  independent  of 
earthly  power.  To  the  naive  materialism  of 
the  good  woman,  who  desired  that  her  two 
sons  should  sit,  one  on  his  right  hand  and 
the  other  on  his  left,  he  answered:  "Can  ye 
be  baptised  with  the  baptism  wherewith  I 
have  to  be  baptised.^"  In  other  words,  he  de- 
clares rank  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven  to  con- 
sist in  enlarged  possibilities  of  loving  service, 
not  in  outward  pomp  and  sovereignty.  And 
he  significantly  adds :  "  To  sit  on  my  right 
hand  or  on  my  left  is  not  mine  to  give,"  i.e. 
the  future  is  in  the  hands  of  God.  The  atti- 
tude of  Jesus,  as  we  may  be  sure,  was  one  of 
such  absolute  trust  in  God,  that  he  was  quite 
prepared  to  accept  the  continued  political  de- 
pendence of  Israel,  if  that  were  the  will  of 
God ;  and  indeed  towards  the  end  of  his  life 
he  seems  to  have  seen  perfectly  clearly  that 
the  popular  conception  of  the  Messiah,  which, 
in  spite  of  all  his  efforts  to  turn  it  into  a  new 
channel,  had  taken  firm  hold  upon  the  public 
mind,  and  was  encouraged  for  their  own  ends 


82  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

by  the  Pharisees,  could  only  result  In  the  com- 
plete subjugation  of  Israel  and  the  destruction 
of  the  temple  service.  In  any  case,  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  was  so  purely  spiritual  in  its 
character  that  it  could  not  possibly  be  con- 
nected in  the  mind  of  Jesus  with  the  political 
supremacy  of  Israel.  No  doubt  he  wisely 
limited  his  efforts  to  "the  lost  sheep  of  the 
house  of  Israel,"  but  this  limitation  was  never 
in  his  mind  connected  with  a  belief  in  the 
future  political  sovereignty  or  even  indepen- 
dence of  Israel,  but  only  with  his  ardent  de- 
sire to  secure  the  spiritual  salvation  of  his 
countrymen,  and  through  their  instrumental- 
ity of  the  whole  human  race.  The  bitter- 
ness and  hatred  of  the  Pharisees,  and  of  all 
who  cherished  ambitious  hopes  for  the  future 
of  Israel,  is  largely  explained  by  the  way  in 
which  Jesus  trampled  upon  all  their  cher- 
ished prejudices  and  political  expectations. 
Not  only  did  he  tear  off  the  garb  of  self- 
righteousness  which  they  had  wrapped  around 
them ;  not  only  did  he  denounce  them  as  ene- 
mies of  true  religion  and  morality;  but  he 
counselled  what  they  regarded  as  a  tame  sub- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  83 

mission  to  the  oppressive  heathen  power  of 
Rome.  Such  a  profound  antagonism  of  ideals 
could  only  have  one  issue:  the  worldly  material 
ideal  must  triumph  for  a  time,  only  to  be  ulti- 
mately overcome  by  the  intrinsically  stronger 
ideal.  Of  this  issue  Jesus  was  clearly  con- 
scious, and  therefore  he  warned  his  disciples 
that  he  would  be  the  victim  of  the  unholy  rage 
of  the  rulers  and  their  blind  followers ;  while 
yet  he  announced  with  absolute  confidence 
that  the  good  cause  would  ultimately  prevail. 
His  optimism  was  therefore  so  profound  and 
so  robust,  that  even  the  worst  expression  of 
hatred  and  rancour  did  not  destroy  his  faith. 
The  passionate  hatred  with  which  he  was  pur- 
sued to  the  death  was  interpreted  by  him  as  a 
perversion  of  the  inextinguishable  desire  for 
goodness  which  is  inseparable  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  self.  "  Father,  forgive  them,  for 
they  know  not  what  they  do,"  is  the  expres- 
sion of  an  optimism  which  rises  triumphant 
over  even  the  worst  form  of  evil. 

(2)  The  attitude  of  Jesus  towards  those 
pious  souls  who  were  disturbed  by  the  ap- 
parent   triumph    of   evil    without    and    within, 


84  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

was  very  different  from  the  stern  and  un- 
compromising antagonism  which  he  displayed 
toward  the  Pharisees.  What  disturbed  the 
ordinary  pious  Jew  was,  not  so  much  the 
prosperity  of  the  wicked,  as  the  prosper- 
ity of  the  heathen.  Israel  was  the  chosen 
people  of  God,  and  yet  the  "  sinners  of  the 
Gentiles,"  ix.  the  unholy  nations,  who  had 
left  Jehovah  and  given  themselves  up  to 
idolatry  and  unclean  rites,  seemed  to  receive 
greater  favour  from  God  than  the  people 
whom  He  had  chosen  and  who  had  remained 
faithful  to  Him.  His  special  perplexity  was 
the  apparent  injustice  of  God.  A  partial 
answer  was  no  doubt  found  in  the  belief 
that  God  was  chastising  His  people  for  their 
sins,  and  that  He  made  use  of  the  heathen, 
wicked  as  they  were,  as  the  instruments  of 
His  will.  But  the  pious  Jew  never  aban- 
doned the  belief  that  in  some  far-off  time 
the  favour  of  God  would  be  restored  to 
Israel,  and  that  an  awful  day  of  reckoning 
would  come  for  the  heathen. 

Now,   Jesus   does    not   absolutely  deny  that 
there    is    a    certain    justification    in    the    con- 


THE  CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL  85 

trast  between  the  heathen  and  the  Jew.  To 
him  also,  the  moral  wickedness  of  the  heathen 
and  the  grossness  of  their  religious  concep- 
tions seem  palpable ;  but  he  entirely  denies 
the  assumption  that  the  Jew  has  any  claim 
upon  God  to  be  freed  from  oppression,  or 
that  there  is  anything  incompatible  with  the 
justice  of  God  in  the  political  oppression 
of  Israel.  The  first  assumption  arises  from 
conceiving  of  righteousness  as  obedience  to 
an  external  law;  the  second,  from  a  mis- 
apprehension of  the  true  end  of  life.  Hence 
he  seeks  to  show  that  the  course  of  the 
world  is  not  to  be  explained  on  the  legal- 
istic supposition  of  an  external  system  of 
rewards  and  punishments,  or  of  a  special 
claim  on  the  part  of  the  Jew  to  the  favour 
of  God.  The  rio^hteous  man  has  no  rio-Jit 
to  an  external  reward  for  his  righteousness ; 
the  Jew  has  no  claim  as  a  Jew  to  the 
favour  of  God.  For  the  end  of  human  life 
is  not  external  prosperity,  but  the  develop- 
ment of  the  spirit.  When  this  is  once  ad- 
mitted, the  difficulty  arising  from  the  apparent 
triumph    of   the  wicked    assumes    an    entirely 


86  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

new  aspect.  External  prosperity  is  no  test 
of  spiritual  elevation.  "  What  shall  it  profit 
a  man  if  he  gains  the  whole  world  and  loses 
his  life  ?  "  The  true  nature  of  man  is  seen, 
not  in  his  desire  for  the  perishable  things 
of  this  world,  but  in  "hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness."  Nothing  can  satisfy 
man  but  the  orowth  in  him  of  the  divine 
spirit,  and  he  in  whom  that  spirit  dwells 
is  not  disturbed  by  the  want  of  those  things 
which  are  the  mere  accidents  of  existence, 
not  its  essence.  What  is  called  the  pros- 
perity of  the  wicked  is  not  true  prosperity. 
This  is  the  idea  which  Jesus  enforces  in 
that  part  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
which  he  seems  to  have  addressed  to  those 
who  came  to  hear  him,  attracted  by  some- 
thing kindred  in  themselves.  "  Lay  not  up 
for  yourselves  treasures  upon  earth;  but  lay 
up  for  yourselves  treasures  in  heaven."  The 
true  life  does  not  consist  in  the  attainment 
of  finite  and  limited  ends,  but  in  the  pos- 
session of  that  which  is  eternal  and  im- 
perishable. The  beginning  of  spiritual  life, 
therefore,   consists    in    an   entire   surrender  of 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  ^J 

the  finite.  But  this  is  only  the  negative 
side  of  his  teaching:  the  positive  side  is  the 
direction  of  the  whole  being  to  the  infinite 
and  eternal,  or  the  laying  up  of  "  treasures 
in  heaven."  This,  of  course,  does  not  mean 
that  man  is  to  separate  himself  from  all 
earthly  concerns,  and  set  his  affections  upon 
the  future  life,  in  the  sense  of  looking  for- 
ward to  a  reward  which  it  is  hopeless  to 
expect  in  the  present  life.  The  "  heavenly 
treasures "  do  not  consist  in  outward  quali- 
fications, either  there  or  here,  but  in  a 
"change  of  mind,"  which  transforms  the 
whole  spirit,  and  throws  a  new  light  upon 
all  things.  "  If  thine  eye  be  single,  thy 
whole  body  shall  be  full  of  light."  So  when 
the  "  mind's  eye "  is  single,  the  whole  world 
assumes  a  new  aspect.  This  transformation 
of  the  soul  is  the  new  creation  of  the  world : 
the  mind  to  which  everything  seemed  an  in- 
soluble riddle  now  sees  the  confused  and 
indistinct  mass  of  objects  fall  into  their 
proper  place  in  the  organic  unity  of  the 
whole.  All  finite  ends  are  universalised  when 
they   are    view^ed    by    reference    to    God,    and 


88  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

all  worthy  action  is  then  seen  to  consist  in 
the  service  of  God.  "  Ye  cannot  serve  God 
and  mammon." 

Now,  if  the  true  life  of  man  consists  in  the 
service  of  God,  the  wicked  must  not  be  re- 
garded as  prosperous,  but  as  miserable  in  the 
extreme.  They  have  lost  what  Dante  calls 
the  "good  of  the  intellect,"  —  that  rational 
good  which  is  the  source  of  all  joy  and  peace. 
There  can  be  no  need  to  "justify  the  ways  of 
God"  by  any  far-fetched  attempt  to  explain 
why  wickedness  is  rewarded  and  righteous- 
ness punished.  Wickedness  is  7iever  rewarded, 
and  righteousness  is  never  punished.  It  is 
no  reward  to  "lose  one's  life":  it  is  no  pun- 
ishment to  "  save  one's  life."  For  he  who 
seeks  the  lower  misses  the  higher,  while  he 
who  seeks  the  higher  has  the  lower  "added 
to  him."  In  other  words,  devotion  to  uni- 
versal or  impersonal  ends  —  to  all  that  makes 
for  the  good  of  the  whole  —  is  the  secret  of 
blessedness.  By  giving  up  his  exclusive  self 
man  gains  a  wider  self,  which  is  the  true  self. 
And  this  true  self  is  but  another  name  for 
life    in    God.      For    the    only    reason    why    in 


THE   CHRISTIAN  WEAL  89 

this  higher  Hfe  man  is  in  unity  with  himself 
is  because  he  is  in  unity  with  the  whole  ten- 
dency of  the  world,  i.e.  with  the  will  of  God. 
In  his  earlier  teaching  Jesus  seeks  to  com- 
mend the  new  way  of  truth  by  showing  that 
the  love  of  God  is  revealed  in  nature  as  well 
as  in  human  life.  We  have  seen  how,  in  later 
Judaism,  the  decay  of  prophetic  inspiration 
and  devotion  to  the  letter  of  the  Law  resulted 
in  ultimately  making  God  a  name  for  an  in- 
definable Power,  not  revealed  in  the  world, 
but  concealed  behind  an  impenetrable  veil. 
Thus  the  tendency,  which  was  always  pres- 
ent in  the  Jewish  religion,  reached  its  climax. 
Now  Jesus  entirely  reverses  this  conception 
of  a  purely  transcendent  God.  God  is  in- 
deed the  Creator  of  the  world,  but  He  is  best 
seen,  not  in  the  great  and  terrible  forces  of 
nature,  but  in  its  silent  and  orderly  processes, 
and  in  the  purposive  energy  which  works  in 
the  life  of  flower  and  bird  and  beast.  He 
does  not  stand  apart  from  nature  in  lonely 
isolation,  but  His  spirit  pervades  all  things 
and  quickens  them  by  its  presence.  Hence 
in    his    parables    Jesus    finds    the    evidence  of 


90  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

God's  goodness  in  the  ordinary  occurrences 
of  the  homely  earth.  There  is  a  tender  and 
solemn  light  on  the  most  familiar  things  be- 
cause God  is  felt  to  be  present  in  them,  not 
hidden  behind  them.  Especially  in  the  life 
and  growth  of  nature  Jesus  finds  evidence 
of  the  continuous  and  loving  care  of  God. 
With  penetrative  imagination  he  sees  the 
formative  activity  of  God  working  in  the 
beauty  with  which  He  clothes  the  grass  of 
the  field,  which  to-day  is  and  to-morrow  is 
cast  into  the  oven ;  in  the  lilies,  clothed  in  a 
glory  exceeding  all  the  splendour  of  human 
art ;  in  the  insignificant  mustard-seed,  which 
expands  in  harmony  with  all  the  skyey  influ- 
ences into  the  organic  unity  of  root,  stem, 
leaves,  and  blossoms,  with  the  birds  swaying 
in  its  branches.  Thus  God  works  not  itpou 
but  through  the  things  which  have  come 
from  His  hands.  Nature  is  not  a  dead  ma- 
chine, wielded  by  the  hands  of  omnipotence, 
l3ut  it  is  instinct  with  that  eternal  principle 
of  life  which  exliibits  itself  in  the  ever-recur- 
ring cycle  of  changes,  inorganic  and  organic. 
To  the    eye  of   Jesus,  nature  is  thus  a  mani- 


THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  91 

festation  of  the  wisdom  and  loving  care  of 
God ;  and  he  asks  if  it  is  credible  that  He 
who  takes  such  pains  to  fashion  and  provide 
for  the  life  of  plant  and  animal  is  less  inter- 
ested in  man.  "  Behold,  the  birds  of  the 
heaven,  that  they  sow  not,  neither  do  they 
reap,  nor  gather  into  barns,  and  your  heav- 
enly Father  feedeth  them.  Are  not  ye  of 
much  more  value  than  they?" 

The  "free  and  friendly  eyes"  with  which 
Jesus  in  the  earlier  years  of  his  ministry  con- 
templated nature  never  deserted  him;  but,  as 
the  malevolence  and  opposition  of  the  scribes 
and  Pharisees  with  their  blinded  followers 
increased,  the  problem  of  evil  demanded  even 
a  deeper  faith.  There  was  to  him  no  real 
trial  of  faith  in  the  external  prosperity  of  the 
wicked,  for  he  saw  that  the  wicked  received 
precisely  the  reward  which  their  acts  de- 
manded ;  but  the  apparent  success  of  the  op- 
position to  the  work  of  God  seemed  to  demand 
another  explanation.  Having  absolute  faith 
in  the  saving  power  of  love,  he  yet  found 
that  in  the  majority  of  his  countrymen  his 
revelation  only  provoked  a    more  bigoted   be- 


92  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

lief  in  their  own  unspiritual  ideas  and  a 
hatred  of  the  truth  that  was  growing  in  in- 
tensity until,  as  he  foresaw,  the  sacrifice  of 
his  own  life  would  be  the  inevitable  result. 
A  similar  result,  it  was  evident  to  him,  must 
follow  the  diffusion  of  the  truth  in  all  ages. 
The  conflict  of  principles  must  ever  call  into 
play  all  that  is  best  and  all  that  is  worst  in 
man.  "  Think  not  that  I  came  to  send  peace 
on  the  earth :  I  came  not  to  send  peace,  but 
a  sword."  How  is  this  weakness  of  the 
good  cause  to  be  explained  ?  Has  God  in 
truth,  as  the  majority  believed,  given  over  the 
world  to  the  rule  of  Satan } 

The  answer  of  Jesus  reveals  the  infinite 
depth  of  his  optimism.  The  triumph  of  the 
evil  cause  is  no  triumph,  but  a  defeat.  For 
in  what  does  it  consist.^  It  cannot  kill  the 
truth  itself,  which  is  eternal,  but  only  the 
body  of  those  whose  lives  are  a  witness  of  its 
power.  There  is  nothing  in  life  so  pathetic 
as  the  temporary  triumph  of  a  bad  cause ; 
for  that  triumph  means  tliat  for  a  time  men 
in  tlicir  delusion  are  shut  out  from  the  bless- 
edness of  unity  witli   God,  and   therefore  with 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  93 

themselves.  On  the  other  hand,  those  who 
Hve  in  the  truth  have  the  whole  tendency  of 
things  on  their  side,  and  conscious  of  this 
they  cannot  be  touched  in  the  centre  of  their 
being.  Still  the  problem  remains:  why  does 
evil  apparently  triumph.^  A  partial  answer 
is,  that  its  triumph  is  only  apparent — it  is 
never  complete,  and  it  has  no  permanency. 
But  more  than  this :  its  temporary  triumph  is 
essential  to  the  full  disclosure  of  all  that  the 
truth  contains.  The  false  principle  must 
show  its  bitter  fruits,  and  must  accomplish  its 
perfect  work  before  it  completely  reveals  its 
true  nature.  Hence,  the  more  it  outwardly 
triumphs  and  shows  its  evil  nature,  the  more 
surely  is  the  way  prepared  for  its  final  over- 
throw. "Where  the  carcase  is,  there  are  the 
vultures  gathered  together."  Man  can  only 
seek  for  truth  and  goodness,  and  if  for  a 
time  he  turns  his  energies  against  the  good 
cause,  it  is  not  in  the  spirit  of  a  being  who 
desires  evil — for  man  is  not  a  devil,  but  in 
his  real  being  a  "son  of  God"  —  but  in  his 
confusion  of  the  true  with  the  false.  Hence 
the   outward   success   of    the    bad    cause  is   a 


94  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

real  failure.  Just  as  man  cannot  find  rest  In 
any  finite  end,  so  he  can  never  be  satisfied 
permanently  with  anything  short  of  the  truth. 
It  is  the  truth  he  is  really  seeking,  and  at 
last  the  truth  must  prevail.  Thus  Jesus  finds 
in  the  worst  form  of  evil  a  "soul  of  good- 
ness." The  w^orld  is  through  and  through 
the  product  of  divine  love. 

Now,  with  this  grasp  of  the  principle  that 
the  good  cause  must  ultimately  prevail,  while 
yet  it  implies  a  conflict  with  the  opposite 
principle  of  evil,  Jesus  saw  that  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  was  a  process,  a  development  of 
the  hio-her  in  its  struQ^o-le  with  the  lower. 
Nothing  can  ultimately  withstand  the  princi- 
ple of  goodness ;  but  in  his  blindness  and 
evil  will  man  may  for  a  time  turn  his  ener- 
gies against  it.  Hence  the  slow  growth  of 
the  "kingdom  of  heaven,"  —  a  growth  so  slow 
that  it  often  seems  to  be  arrest  or  even  retro- 
gression. This  idea  is  expressed  l^y  Jesus  in 
a  variety  of  figures.  Tlic  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  compared  to  the  leaven,  which  was  "hid  in 
three  measures  of  meal  till  the  whole  was 
leavened."      The    most    slrikiug  expression   of 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  95 

the  idea,  however,  is  given  in  that  wonderful 
parable  preserved  in  the  oldest  of  the  gospels, 
the  gospel  of  Mark:  "So  is  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  as  if  a  man  should  cast  seed  into  the 
ground,  and  should  sleep  and  rise  day  and 
night,  and  the  seed  should  spring  and  grow 
up,  he  knoweth  not  how.  For  the  earth 
bringeth  forth  fruit  of  herself;  first  the  blade, 
then  the  ear,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear. 
But  when  the  fruit  is  ripe,  immediately  he 
putteth  in  the  sickle,  for  the  harvest  is  come." 
The  attitude  of  Jesus  towards  the  Messianic 
hope  of  his  countrymen  at  once  follows  from 
his  conception  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  as 
already  present,  and  yet  as  a  process  of  conflict 
with  evil.  Holding  these  views  he  could  not 
possibly  believe  in  any  sudden  or  miraculous 
change  which  should  break  the  continuity  be- 
tween the  present  and  the  future.  Hence  he 
refused  to  attest  his  divine  mission  by  signs 
and  wonders.  When  the  Pharisees,  in  their 
usual  crass  materialism,  demanded  a  "sisfn,"  — 
i£.  demanded  that  Jesus  should  virtually  deny 
the  presence  of  God  in  the  ordinary  processes 
of    nature  and   in    the    normal    experiences  of 


96  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

human  life  —  his  answer  was:  "An  evil  and 
adulterous  generation  seeketh  after  a  sign,  and 
there  shall  no  sign  be  given  to  it  but  the  sign 
of  the  prophet  Jonah."  What  he  meant  was, 
as  Luke  saw,  that  no  "  sign  "  could  authenti- 
cate his  mission  but  the  truth  which  he  pro- 
claimed. Truth  "shines  by  its  own  light;"  and 
if  men  "  will  not  hear  Moses  and  the  prophets, 
neither  would  they  believe  if  one  were  to  rise 
from  the  dead."  Hence  Jesus,  though  he  em- 
ploys the  apocalyptic  imagery  current  in  his 
day,  entirely  transforms  the  current  conception 
of  the  future  success  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  The  triumph  of  good  over  evil,  as  he 
affirms,  is  not  to  be  effected  by  catastrophe 
and  revolution,  but  only  by  the  persistent 
labours  of  those  who  live  in  the  truth.  His 
faith  does  not  rest  upon  a  superstitious  belief 
in  a  sudden  interposition  from  heaven.  In  his 
eyes  good  can  be  developed  only  through  the 
lovincr  efforts  of  those  in  whom  the  divine 
Spirit  operates,  and  who  "let  their  light  so 
shine  among  men  that  others,  seeing  their 
good  works,  glorify  their  Father  which  is  in 
heaven."     Thus  his  optimism  flows  from  abso- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  97 

lute  trust  in  tlie  goodness  of  God,  and  in  a  rec- 
QOfnition  that  man  in  his  ideal  nature  is  a  "  son 
of  God."  For  this  reason  he  believes  that  to 
the  success  of  the  kingdom  it  is  essential  that 
each  individual  should  have  a  personal  experi- 
ence of  the  truth.  This  is  indicated  by  the 
images  of  the  leaven  and  the  mustard-seed. 
He  does  not  expect  the  triumph  of  goodness 
from  any  external  arrangements  of  society,  or 
rather  he  conceives  of  these  as  but  the  par- 
tial expression  of  a  truth  which  must  first 
exist  in  those  whose  hearts  are  open  to  the 
truth.  At  the  same  time,  since  the  very 
essence  of  Jesus'  teaching  is  the  essentially 
social  nature  of  man,  the  principle  which  he 
announced  could  not  but  manifest  itself  in  a 
transformation  of  social  and  political  institu- 
tions, though  these  can  never  be  more  than 
a  partial  expression  of  the  idea  of  a  king- 
dom in  which  the  spirit  of  God  is  present 
in  each  member  of  the  wliolc,  at  once  dis- 
tincruishino:  and  unitino^  them  in  an  oroanic 
unity. 

In    this    conception    of    a    spiritual   commu- 
nity, in  which  each  has  found  himself  by  los- 


98  THE  CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

ing  himself,  Jesus  finds  the  answer  to  that 
lonorinQT  for  dehverance  from  the  evil  of  their 
own  hearts  which  was  the  saving  salt  in  the 
aspirations  of  the  pious  souls  of  his  own 
day.  Just  as  he  refuses  to  postpone  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  to  some  far-off  day,  when 
good  shall  conquer  evil,  maintaining  that  evil 
is  already  overcome  in  principle ;  so  he  tells 
those  who  "  labour  and  are  heavy-laden,"  long- 
ing for  a  deliverance  in  which  they  have  but 
faint  belief,  that  the  way  to  the  conquest  of  evil 
in  themselves  is  now  open.  And  the  secret 
is  in  identification  with  their  brethren,  the 
sons  of  the  one  Father.  This  was  the  secret 
of  that  triumphant  optimism  which  nothing 
could  destroy  in  him.  This  idea  is  expressed 
in  the  title  which  he  most  frequently  applied 
to  himself,  the  "  Son  of  Man."  This  term 
is  often  used  in  the  Old  Testament,  —  for  in- 
stance, in  Ezekiel,  —  to  express  the  weakness 
and  dependence  of  man,  as  contrasted  with 
the  power  and  majesty  of  God.  In  Daniel, 
again,  it  refers  not  to  a  personal  Messiah, 
but  to  the  collective  body  of  the  saints,  as 
contrasted    with    the    great,   victorious    beasts. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  99 

the  symbols  of  the  powerful  world-empires. 
"  The  core  of  Daniel's  Messianic  hope  is  the 
universal  dominion  of  the  saints."  ^'  Now 
if,  as  seems  probable,  Jesus  adopted  the  term 
from  Daniel,  he  meant  by  it  to  indicate,  not 
merely  the  spirituality  of  his  kingdom,  but 
his  own  identity  with  the  whole  race.  In 
any  case,  the  essential  meaning  of  the  title 
is  that  Jesus  conceived  himself  as  part  and 
parcel  of  humanity:  in  other  words,  he  found 
the  secret  of  life  in  complete  identification 
with  its  joys  and  sorrows,  its  successes  and 
sins.  And  because  he  was  thus  identified 
with  man,  he  is  also  called  the  "  Son  of 
God."  He  was  one  with  the  Father  in 
nature,  though  not  in  person,  since  he  was 
conscious  of  himself  as  the  medium  throuQ^h 
wiiich  the  eternal  love  of  God  was  revealed 
and  communicated  to  men.  Nothing  can, 
in  his  view,  withstand  the  power  of  love. 
Man,  weak  and  sinful  as  he  is,  must  suc- 
cumb to  the  omnipotence  of  goodness,  for 
goodness  is  the  spirit  of  the  living  God.  It 
was   with   a  full    sense   of    the   importance    of 

*  Schiirer's  History  of  the  Jewish  People ^  2.  2.  138. 


lOO  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

the  question  that,  towards  the  close  of  his 
Hfe,  he  asked  the  disciples :  "  Who  do  ye  say 
that  the  Son  of  Man  is  ? "  And  when  Peter, 
in  a  flash  of  insight,  answered:  "Thou  art 
the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God,"  he 
immediately  goes  on  to  warn  the  disciples 
that  he  must  "suffer  many  things  of  the 
elders  and  chief  priests  and  the  scribes,  and 
be  killed."  He  was  the  Messiah,  just  because 
it  was  his  mission  to  effect  the  deliverance 
of  mankind,  not  through  outward  triumph, 
but  through  suffering  and  death.  To  the 
disciples,  with  their  preconception  of  a  Mes- 
siah who  should  come  invested  with  miracu- 
lous power  and  dignity,  this  was  a  "hard 
saying";  and  the  same  apostle,  who  had  for 
a  moment  got  a  glimpse  of  the  divine  human- 
ity of  Jesus,  now  exclaims  in  horror :  "  Be 
it  far  from  thee.  Lord:  this  shall  never  be 
unto  thee."  Thus  even  Peter  puts  himself 
on  the  side  of  those  w^ho  imagined  that  a 
suffering  Messiah  was  a  contradiction  in 
terms.  He  had  not  learned  the  lesson  of  the 
divine  life  and  teaching  of  the  Master,  and 
therefore    Jesus    rebukes    him    for    the     mate- 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  loi 

rialism  of  his  conception :  "  Thou  art  a  stum- 
bling-block unto  me :  for  thou  mindest  not 
the  things  of  God,  but  the  things  of  men." 
It  is  not  by  self-assertion  and  outward  tri- 
umph, but  by  suffering  and  death,  that  the 
true  Christ  and  his  followers  can  save  the 
world:  "Whosoever  would  save  his  life  shall 
lose  it :  and  whosoever  shall  lose  his  life  for 
my  sake  shall  gain  it." 

As  he  transforms  the  ordinary  idea  of  the 
Messiah,  so  Jesus  gives  to  the  belief  in  a 
final  judgment  of  the  world  a  new  and 
deeper  meaning.  The  wicked  and  the  right- 
eous are  no  longer  distinguished  as  those 
who  obey  the  law  from  those  who  violate  it, 
but  as  those  who  love  from  those  who  are 
indifferent  to  their  fellow-men.  The  whole 
system  of  external  rewards  and  punishments 
is  swept  away,  and  in  its  place  we  have  the 
one  fundamental  distinction  of  those  whose 
lives  are  ruled  by  the  spirit  of  brotherhood, 
and  those  who  live  for  tliemselves.  Under 
the  guise  of  the  current  imagery  of  a  Last 
Judgment,  when  all  men  shall  be  gathered 
together  to  receive  their   hnal  sentence,  Jesus 


102  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

inculcates  the  truth  that  the  spiritual  status 
of  men  is  ah'eady  determined  by  the  prin- 
ciple which  is  outwardly  expressed  in  their 
actions.  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  unto  one  of 
these  my  brethren,  even  these  least,  ye  did  it 
unto  me."  Thus  while  he  leaves  untouched 
the  current  belief  in  a  future  judgment,  he 
brings  to  the  test  of  human  action  an  entirely 
new  standard.  Not  the  pious  works  upon 
which  men  pride  themselves,  but  the  unselfish 
life,  determines  the  eternal  destiny  of  man. 
He  who  lives  the  divine  life  is  he  who,  like 
the  Master,  has  mero;ed  his  own  Q:ood  in  the 
good  of  the  whole,  and  who  has  proved  his 
love  of  man  by  the  ordinary  tender  charities 
which   seem   so  little,  but  mean   so  much. 

From  what  has  been  said  we  can  understand 
the  sense  in  which  Jesus  speaks  of  "  Faith." 
To  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  religion  meant 
acceptance  of  the  teaching  of  the  doctors  of 
the  Law,  as  based  upon  their  interpretations  of 
scripture.  Thus  for  the  ordinary  Jew  there 
was  a  double  wall  of  partition  raised  between 
him  and  God.  Not  only  had  he  no  direct  con- 
sciousness of  the  divine  nature,  and  therefore 


THE  CHRISTTAN  IDEAL  103 

of  his  own  nature,  but  even  the  revelations  of 
truth  which  were  contained  in  scripture  came 
to  him  through  the  distorted  medium  of  tradi- 
tion. No  doubt  it  was  impossible  to  read  the 
inspired  words  of  legislator  and  prophet  with- 
out catching  something  of  their  spirit;  but  so 
overlaid  was  the  sacred  text  with  the  prosaic 
and  deadening  interpretations  of  the  scribes, 
which  were  dinned  into  his  ears  at  home,  at 
school,  and  in  the  synagogue,  that  it  was  hard 
for  him  to  pierce  through  the  mass  of  tradi- 
tional ideas  to  the  truth  which  they  over- 
laid and  obscured.  One  consequence  of  this 
traditionalism  was  an  incapacity  to  judge  for 
himself  when  a  new  revelation  of  truth  was 
presented  to  him.  This  was  one  of  the  great 
obstacles  which  Jesus  met  in  his  effort  to 
bring  his  countrymen  into  living  contact  with 
the  truth.  The  leaden  weight  of  custom  lay 
heavy  upon  the  minds  of  "the  people  of  the 
Law,"  and  only  by  a  powerful  effort  could  they 
shake  off  the  mass  of  prejudice  and  supersti- 
tion which  they  had  been  taught  to  regard  as 
the  revelation  of  God.  And  this  intellectual 
difliculty  was  intensified  by  the  spiritual  arro- 


104  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

ofance  which  had  been  ensfendered  in  their 
minds  by  the  traditional  belief  in  their  unique 
position  as  the  people  of  Jehovah.  Thus  the 
Jew  had  to  free  both  his  intellect  and  his  con- 
science from  the  fetters  of  traditionalism  be- 
fore he  was  in  a  position  to  look  straight  at 
the  truth.  This  explains  why  Jesus  insists 
upon  "  faith  "  as  a  child-like  attitude.  Only 
those  from  whose  minds  and  hearts  the  arti- 
ficial veil  of  custom  and  pride  of  race  had  been 
removed  were  in  a  position  to  accept  the  new 
revelation  of  truth.  It  is  in  this  sense,  and  not 
in  the  sense  of  unreasoning  credulity,  that  he 
commends  the  "faith  "  of  those  who  welcomed 
the  truth.  Thus  for  him  "faith"  is  that  open- 
ness to  light  which  is  a  form  of  reason ;  it  is, 
in  fact,  reason  in  its  purest  form.  What  Jesus 
called  upon  men  to  believe  he  supported, 
not  by  an  appeal  to  authority,  but  by  an  ap- 
peal to  trutli  itself.  He  asked  them  to  look 
with  open  eyes  at  the  evidences  of  God's  good- 
ness as  exhibited  in  the  world  of  nature ;  to 
examine  their  own  hearts,  and  to  read  the  say- 
ings of  the  holy  men  of  old  with  intelligence 
and    insight.     To    the    persistent    demand   for 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  105 

supernatural  "  signs  "  of  his  divine  mission,  he 
refused  to  listen,  seeing  in  them  but  another 
form  of  that  crude  materialism  which  infected 
all  their  ideas.  A  saving  "faith"  he  found  in 
those  few  whose  consciousness  of  their  own 
weakness  and  sinfulness  was  so  strong  that, 
under  the  influence  of  his  life  and  words,  it 
removed  the  mist  of  tradition  from  their  minds, 
and  overcame  the  racial  pride  so  natural  in  a 
Jew.  "  Faith  "  is  thus  that  union  of  intellect- 
ual candour  and  moral  simplicity  which  flows 
from  the  vision  of  God.  It  cannot  be  trans- 
ferred externally  from  one  person  to  another, 
but  is  possible  only  in  him  who  has  surren- 
dered all  that  ministers  to  self-righteousness 
and  selfishness.  It  is  thus  another  name  for 
the  consciousness  of  unity  and  reconciliation 
with  God,  and  for  that  "  enthusiasm  of  hu- 
manity" which  flows  from  it.  "  Faith,"  in  other 
words,  is  the  personal  side  of  the  whole  con- 
sciousness of  tlie  "  kingdom  of  heaven,"  as 
Jesus  understood  it :  it  is  the  spirit  which 
operates  in  every  member  of  those  who  are 
reconciled  with  God,  and  are  therefore  at 
unity  with    themselves  and  witli   one  anotlier. 


I06  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

No  doubt  this  faith  has  various  degrees,  but 
in  essence  it  is  always  the  same.  It  is  also 
recognised  by  Jesus  that  it  grows  from  age 
to  age ;  for,  while  he  speaks  of  the  Law  and 
the  prophets  as  giving  a  revelation  of  the 
divine  nature,  he  also  maintains  that  he  has 
himself  given  a  higher  revelation  of  God  than 
was  possible  to  them.  "  Many  prophets  and 
righteous  men  have  earnestly  desired  to  see 
what  ye  see  and  have  not  seen  it,  and  to 
hear  what  ye  hear  and  have  not  heard  it." 
Here,  as  always,  Jesus  holds  by  both  sides 
of  the  truth :  the  essential  identity  of  the 
religious  consciousness  in  all  ages,  and  the 
process  of  expansion  which  it  undergoes  as 
it  comes  to  a  fuller  consciousness  of  what  it 
contained  implicitly  from  the  first. 

There  is  one  other  aspect  of  Christ's 
teaching  which  must  not  be  passed  over. 
Although  the  Messianic  hope  was  usually 
connected  in  the  Jewish  mind  with  the  ap- 
pearance of  an  earthly  Messiah,  and  the 
resurrection  of  the  dead  for  judgment,  it  was 
also  held  by  many  that  after  the  long  reign 
of    the  saints  there   should  follow  an  eternity 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  107 

of  bliss  or  woe  in  another  world.  Now, 
although  Jesus  gave  a  new  meaning  to  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  and  insisted  that  it 
already  existed  in  the  consciousness  of  those 
who  were  reconciled  to  God  and  devoted  to 
the  good  of  humanity,  he  also  held  the  doc- 
trine of  personal  immortality.  When  the 
Sadducees  came,  demanding  a  proof  of  im- 
mortality, he  appealed  to  the  words  of  script- 
ure:  "I  am  the  God  of  Abraham  and  the 
God  of  Isaac  and  the  God  of  Jacob,"  add- 
ing that  "  God  is  not  the  God  of  the  dead 
but  of  the  living."  There  was  an  especial 
appropriateness  in  this  reply  as  directed 
against  the  Sadducees,  who  prided  them- 
selves upon  being  faithful  to  the  teaching  of 
scripture,  as  distinguished  from  the  tradi- 
tional interpretation  accepted  by  the  Phari- 
sees. But,  as  we  have  seen,  Jesus  does  not 
accept  even  the  teaching  of  the  "Law  and 
the  prophets "  without  first  bringing  to  bear 
upon  it  the  light  of  his  own  higher  con- 
sciousness, and  hence  we  may  be  certain 
that  these  words  were  more  than  an  argic- 
mentiim  ad  honiincm,  intended  to  silence   the 


I08  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

Sadducees.  The  meaning  of  Jesus  seems  to 
be  that,  as  the  consciousness  of  the  hving 
God  involves  the  consciousness  of  man  as 
identical  in  his  essential  nature  with  God, 
we  must  believe  in  the  eternal  continuance 
of  this  fundamental  relation.  To  see  what 
man  is  in  his  true  nature  is  to  know  that 
his  life  comes  from  God,  and  that  only  in 
the  consciousness  of  his  union  with  God 
does  he  learn  what  in  essence  he  is.  The 
essence  of  man  is  his  life,  i.e.  his  conscious 
existence,  and  this  must  be  as  eternal  as 
God.  The  true  destiny  of  man  is  to  live  in 
union  with  God,  and  this  destiny  cannot  be 
taken  from  him  by  God  whose  son  he  is. 
Thus  Jesus,  as  he  conceives  of  God  as  the 
ever-living  Father,  also  conceives  of  men  as 
beings  with  an  immortal  destiny.  The  future 
existence  of  man  he  also  conceives  as  a 
higher  stage  of  being,  when  they  shall  be 
"  as  the  angels,"  i.e.  shall  enjoy  a  clearer 
vision  of  God,  and  when  goodness  shall  at 
last  have  overcome  evil,  and  no  longer  be 
forced  to  engage  in  perpetual  conflict  with 
it.     While  Jesus  thus  maintains  the  personal 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  109 

immortality  of  man,  he  does  not  base  upon 
it  a  proof  of  the  reaHty  of  his  view  of  hfe ; 
on  the  contrary,  he  bases  immortality  upon 
the  belief  in  God  and  the  essential  identity 
in  nature  of  God  and  man.  For  he  asserts 
that  those  who  will  not  be  convinced  of  the 
truth  by  "  Moses  and  the  prophets "  would 
not  believe  "  even  if  one  were  to  rise  from 
the  dead."  The  order  of  ideas  in  his  mind 
therefore  is  God,  sonship,  immortality.  It  is 
our  knowledofe  of  the  nature  of  God  which 
reveals  to  us  his  Fatherhood,  and  his  Father- 
hood is  the  proof  of  the  immortality  of  his 
children. 


CHAPTER   V 

MEDIEVAL    CHRISTIANITY 

In  the  last  chapter  an  attempt  has  been 
made  to  present  the  Christian  ideal  of  life, 
as  set  forth  by  its  Founder.  No  attempt 
will  here  be  made  to  deal  with  that  impos- 
ing edifice  of  doctrine  which  was  built  up 
by  St.  Paul  and  the  other  apostles  and 
by  the  subsequent  reflection  of  Christian 
theologians;  but  it  will  help  to  throw  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  into  bolder  relief,  if  we 
contrast  with  it  the  Christianity  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 

When  we  pass  from  the  religion  of  Jesus 
to  mediaeval  Christianity,  we  seem  to  have 
entered  into  another  world.  The  free  and 
genial  glance  with  which  our  Lord  contem- 
plated nature,  the  triumphant  optimism  of  his 
conception  of  human  life,  and  his  absolute 
faith    in    the    realisation    of    the    kingdom    of 


MEDIAEVAL   CHRlSTIANirV  in 

heaven  here  and  now,  have  been  replaced  by 
a  hard  and  almost  mechanical  idea  of  the 
external  world,  by  a  stern  denunciation  of 
the  utter  perversity  and  evil  of  society,  and 
by  the  postponement  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  to  the  future  life.  How  has  this  re- 
markable change  come  over  the  Christian 
consciousness?  To  answer  this  question 
would  be  a  long  task,  and  I  shall  only  state 
three  main  characteristics  in  the  mediaeval 
conception  of  life,  trying  to  indicate  how  they 
originated. 

(i)  The  first  characteristic  to  which  I  shall 
refer  is  the  universal  belief  that  the  "kino^- 
dom  of  heaven,"  to  use  the  term  which  Jesus 
so  often  employs,  could  not  be  realised  in  this 
life,  but  was  entirely  a  thing  of  the  future  life. 
We  can  trace  the  gradual  growth  of  this  con- 
viction. The  crucifixion  of  their  Lord  was  a 
terrible  shock  to  his  disciples,  and  there  is 
2food  reason  to  believe  that  for  a  moment 
it  caused  their  belief  in  his  Messiahship  to 
waver.  But,  as  the  divine  life  and  sayings  of 
the  Master  came  back  to  their  remembrance, 
they  began   to  understand    what   he  had  him- 


112  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OE  LIEE 

self  always  affirmed  —  that  his  kingxlom  was 
a  spiritual  one,  which  could  be  realised  only 
by  the  destruction  of  evil  and  the  triumph  of 
righteousness.  Yet  they  still  clung  to  the 
idea  that  so  great  a  revolution  could  be 
accomplished  only  by  a  sudden  and  miracu- 
lous change;  and  hence  in  the  Apostolic  Age 
the  Christian,  imperfectly  liberated  from  the 
materialism  of  the  ordinary  Messianic  concep- 
tion, imagined  that  the  complete  triumph  of 
righteousness  would  take  place  in  a  few  years 
by  the  second  coming  of  the  Lord  to  estab- 
lish upon  earth  the  reign  of  peace  and  good 
will.  Living  in  this  faith,  the  primitive  com- 
munity of  Christians  made  no  attempt  to 
interfere  with  existing  institutions,  civil  or 
ecclesiastical,  but  were  content  to  prepare 
for  the  imminent  advent  of  the  Lord.  But 
as  time  went  on,  and  still  the  Lord  did  not 
appear,  his  advent  came  to  seem  more  and 
more  remote.  Meantime  the  Christian  found 
himself  living  in  the  midst  of  the  decaying 
civilisation  of  Rome,  and  there  was  little  won- 
der that  the  conversion  of  the  world  should 
seem  an  almost  impossible   task:  — 


MEDLEVAL    CHRISTIANITY  113 

Stout  was  its  arm,  each  thew  and  bone 

Seemed  puissant  and  alive, — 
But  ah  !  its  heart,  its  heart  was  stone, 

And  so  it  could  not  thrive, 

"How  can  these  bones  live?"  he  naturally 
exclaimed.  How  can  this  mass  of  corrup- 
tion be  transformed  into  the  divine  image? 
Moreover,  try  as  they  might  to  avoid  collision 
with  the  secular  power  of  the  Roman  empire, 
the  Christians  found  that  they  could  not 
meet  together  for  mutual  encouragement  and 
stimulation,  without  drawing  suspicion  upon 
themselves  as  a  secret  society  plotting  the 
overthrow  of  the  empire ;  and,  indeed,  though 
they  had  no  such  purpose,  the  Christian  ideal 
was  antagonistic  to  the  pagan,  and  must  at 
last  meet  with  and  overcome  it,  or  be  itself 
subdued.  The  outward  symbol  of  this  war 
of  ideals  was  the  persecutions  to  which  the 
Christians  were  subjected  in  the  second  and 
third  centuries.  Thus  the  present  world  came 
to  appear  more  and  more  a  wilderness  througli 
which  the  little  band  of  Christians  was  com- 
pelled to  march,  sad  and  solitary,  on  their 
way  to  the   heavenly  land.     This  sombre  cast 


114  ^-^^  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

of  thought  never  vanished  from  the  Christian 
consciousness  till  the  modern  age,  and  per- 
haps it  cannot  be  said  to  have  quite  vanished 
even  now.  One  might  have  supposed  that 
the  more  hopeful  spirit  of  an  earlier  age 
would  have  come  back  when  Christianity  had, 
by  its  resistless  energy,  compelled  the  Roman 
empire,  in  the  person  of  Constantine,  to 
make  terms  with  it.  But  the  inrush  of  the 
fierce  northern  hordes  into  the  Roman  em- 
pire, and  their  facile  conversion  to  Chris- 
tianity, confirmed  in  a  new  way  the  "other- 
worldliness  "  of  the  Church.  For  Christianity, 
to  their  rude  and  undisciplined  minds,  was  in 
all  its  deeper  aspects  unintelligible,  and  its 
doctrines  could  only  be  accepted  in  blind  and 
unquestioning  faith.  A  superstitious  rever- 
ence for  the  Church  did  not  restrain  them 
from  the  wildest  excesses  of  passion,  and  the 
only  curb  to  their  brutal  violence  and  self- 
will  was  the  hope  of  future  reward  or  the 
dread  of  future  retribution.  Thus  mediaeval 
Christianity,  unable  to  overcome  the  barbar- 
ism and  lawlessness  of  the  world,  in  a  sort 
of   despair  sought   comfort   in   the  future  life. 


MEDIAE  VAL   CHRISTIANITY 


15 


This  is  the  spirit  which  rules  the  whole  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  it  was  one  of  the  tasks 
of  the  Reformation  to  awaken  anew  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  infinite  significance  of  the 
present  life  as  a  preparation  for  the  future 
life,  and  to  quicken  all  the  institutions  of  so- 
ciety and  all  the  powders  of  the  individual  soul 
with  the  divine  spirit  of  pristine  Christianity. 
(2)  A  second  characteristic  of  the  mediaeval 
period  is  a  belief  in  the  absolute  authority  of 
the  Church  in  all  matters  of  faith  and  wor- 
ship, and  the  consequent  distinction  between 
the  clergy  and  the  laity.  This  idea  had  its 
roots  in  the  same  principle  as  that  which  led 
to  the  conception  of  religion  as  essentially 
the  hope  of  a  future  world.  The  rude  bar- 
barian could  not  comprehend  the  doctrines 
of  the  Church,  nor  could  his  self-will  be 
broken  except  by  a  powder  to  which  he  was 
forced  to  bend  his  stubborn  will.  Hence  the 
Church  demanded  implicit  faith  in  its  teach- 
ing, and  absolute  submission  to  its  authority. 
Nor  is  it  easy  to  see  how  otherwise  the  soil 
could  have  been  prepared  in  which  the  new 
seed   of    the    Reformation  was  to  erow.     The 


Il6  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

discipline  of  the  mediaeval  Church  was,  on  the 
whole,  as  salutary  as  it  was  inevitable ;  but  dis- 
cipline is  justifiable  only  as  a  preparation  for 
the  exercise  of  independence  and  reason;  and 
hence  the  time  inevitably  came  when  men,  hav- 
ing outgrown  the  stage  of  pupilage,  asserted 
their  indefeasible  right  to  a  rational  liberty. 
This  was  the  claim  made  by  Luther  when  he 
unfurled  "the  banner  of  the  free  spirit." 

(3)  The  last  characteristic  of  the  Middle 
Ages  to  which  I  shall  refer  is  the  opposition 
of  faith  and  reason.  To  come  to  its  full  rights 
as  the  universal  religion  Christianity  had  to 
free  itself  from  all  that  was  accidental  and 
temporary  in  the  conceptions  of  its  first  ad- 
herents. The  first  step  in  this  process  was 
taken  when  St.  Paul  disengaged  it  from  the 
accidents  of  its  Jewish  origin  and  presented 
its  essence  in  a  clear  and  definite  form.  But 
the  process  could  not  end  here,  for  every  age 
has  its  own  preconceptions  and  its  own  diffi- 
culties. When  Christianity  went  beyond  the 
boundaries  of  Judea,  it  had  to  meet  and  over- 
come the  dualism  of  Greek  thought,  as  it  had 
met  and  overcome  Jewish  narrowness  and  ex- 


MEDL^VAL   CHRISTIANITY  \\y 

cluslveness.  The  victory  was  only  imperfectly 
accomplished.  The  reconciling  principle  of 
the  essential  identity  of  the  human  and  divine 
could  not  be  abandoned  without  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  central  idea  of  Christianity,  but 
the  Church  did  not  entirely  escape  the  danger 
of  making  theology  a  transcendent  theory  of 
the  absolutely  inscrutable  nature  of  God.  At 
this  imperfect  stage  of  development  Christian 
dogma  was  for  a  time  arrested,  so  that  when  re- 
flection arose  with  Scholasticism  the  doctrines 
of  the  Church  were  assumed  to  be  expressions 
of  absolute  truth,  although  they  contained 
certain  mysterious  and  incomprehensible  ele- 
ments. There  is  indeed  in  the  development 
of  Scholasticism  itself  a  growing  consciousness 
of  the  antagonism  of  reason  to  the  dogmas  of 
the  Church  as  commonly  understood,  a  con- 
sciousness which  in  Occam  even  reaches  the 
form  of  a  belief  that  there  are  doctrines  which 
are  not  only  "  beyond  "  but  "  contrary  to  "  rea- 
son ;  but  the  schoolmen  never  lost  their  faith 
in  the  truth  of  the  dogmas,  though  they  passed 
from  credo  7it  intelligam  to  intclligo  iit  crcdani, 
and  ended  with  credo  quia  iiiipossible.     When 


Il8  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

it  thus  came  to  be  explicitly  affirmed  that  the 
doctrines  of  the  Church  contained  not  merely 
j-^/^rrational  but  irrational  elements,  the  be- 
ginning of  the  end  was  near ;  for  reason,  frus- 
trated in  its  attempt  to  find  unity  with  itself 
in  an  authoritative  creed,  could  only  fall  back 
in  despair  upon  a  universal  scepticism  or  set 
about  a  reconstruction  of  the  creed  itself. 
Thus  Scholasticism  dug  its  own  grave  as  well 
as  the  grave  of  mediaeval  theology,  and  pre- 
pared the  way  for  that  great  modern  move- 
ment which  be^an  with  the  Renaissance  and 
the  Reformation  and  is  still  going  on.  Of  one 
thing  we  may  be  sure,  that  nothing  short  of  a 
perfect  harmony  of  science,  art,  and  religion 
can  permanently  satisfy  the  liberated  human 
spirit.  At  such  a  harmony  it  is  the  hard  task 
of  philosophy  to  aim,  and  only  in  so  far  as  it 
is  secured  can  we  hope  for  the  return  of  that 
half-vanished  faith  in  the  omnipotence  of  good- 
ness with  which  Jesus  was  so  abundantly  filled. 
It  is  therefore  proposed,  in  the  second  part  of 
this  work,  to  ask  how  far  an  idealistic  phi- 
losophy enables  us  to  retain  the  fundamental 
conception  of  life  which  was  enunciated  by 
the  Founder  of    Christianity. 


PART    II 

MODERN    IDEALISM    IN    ITS     RELATION 
TO   THE    CHRISTIAN    IDEAL   OF    LIFE 


CHAPTER  VI 

GENERAL  STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM 

In  his  Foundations  of  Belief,  Mr.  Balfour 
raises  an  objection  to  the  ideahstic  theory 
of  knowledge,  a  consideration  of  which  may 
help  to  bring  out  more  clearly  what  is  here 
meant  by  Idealism.  This  objection  is  di- 
rected primarily  against  what  is  claimed  to 
be  the  doctrine  of  the  late  T.  H.  Green,  but 
it  is  thought  to  apply  with  equal  force 
against  all  who  hold  the  idealistic  view  of 
the  world.  In  what  follows  no  attempt  will 
be  made  to  defend  Green  from  Mr.  Balfour's 
attack.  It  does  not  appear  to  me  true  that 
Green  reduced  the  world  to  a  "  network  of 
relations " ;  but  it  seems  better  to  avoid  all 
disputes  which  turn  upon  the  interpretation 
of  an  author  who  is  not  here  to  defend 
himself,  and  therefore  I  shall  deal  from  an 
independent  point  of  view  with  the  difficulty 


122  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

which   Mr.   Balfour  has    stated  with  his  usual 
force  and  clearness. 

The  main  charge  made  by  Mr.  Balfour 
against  Idealism  is  that  it  "  reduces  all  ex- 
perience  to  an  experience  of  relations,"  or 
"  constitutes  the  universe  out  of  categories." 
Now,  it  is  no  doubt  true,  says  our  author, 
that  we  cannot  reduce  the  universe  to  "  an 
unrelated  chaos  of  impressions  or  sensa- 
tions " ;  but  "  must  we  not  also  grant  that  in 
all  experience  there  is  a  refractory  element 
which,  though  it  cannot  be  presented  in  iso- 
lation, nevertheless  refuses  wholly  to  merge 
its  being  in  a  network  of  relations } "  If  so, 
whence  does  this  irreducible  element  arise  ? 
The  mind,  we  are  told,  is  the  source  of  re- 
lations. What  is  the  source  of  that  which 
is  related }  The  "  thing  in  itself "  of  Kant 
"  raises  more  difficulties  than  it  solves,"  and 
indeed,  the  followers  of  Kant  themselves 
point  out  that  this  hypothetical  cause  of  that 
which  is  "given"  in  experience  cannot  be 
known  as  a  cause,  or  even  as  existing.  But 
"  we  do  not  get  rid  of  the  difficulty  by  get- 
ting rid  of  Kant's  solution  of  it.     His  dictum 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     123 

still  seems  to  remain  true,  that  '  without  mat- 
ter categories  are  empty.'  And,  indeed,  it  is 
hard  to  see  how  it  is  possible  to  conceive  a 
universe  in  which  nothing  is  to  be  permitted 
for  the  relations  to  subsist  between.  Rela- 
tions surely  imply  a  something  which  is  re- 
lated, and  if  that  something  is,  in  the  absence 
of  relations,  '  nothing  for  us  as  thinking  be- 
ings,' so  relations  in  the  absence  of  that 
something  are  mere  symbols  emptied  of  their 
signification."  ^ 

Mr.  Balfour,  it  would  seem,  rejects  the 
sensationalist  theory  that  knowledge  is  re- 
ducible to  an  association  of  individual  feel- 
ings, and  he  also  rejects  the  Kantian  refer- 
ence of  impressions  of  sense  to  a  "  thing  in 
itself " ;  but  he  is  unable  to  see  how  the 
world  can  be  explained  without  the  retention 
of  a  "  matter "  to  supply  the  concrete  filling 
for  the  otherwise  empty  categories.  His  own 
view  would  therefore  seem  to  be  that  the 
knowable  world  involves  two  distinct  ele- 
ments, a  "  matter  of  sense  "  and  the  concep- 
tions or  relations  by  which    that  "  matter  "  is 

*  Balfour's  Foundations  of  Belief.     Am.  ed.,  pp.  144-5. 


124  ^-^^  CHRIST/ A  AT  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

formed.  Where  he  differs  from  Idealism,  as  he 
understands  it,  is  in  denying  that  all  reality 
can  be  reduced  to  relations  of  thought  or 
pure  conceptions.  The  force  of  Mr.  Balfour's 
criticism,  therefore,  depends  upon  two  assump- 
tions :  firstly,  that  it  is  possible  to  retain  the 
Kantian  doctrine  of  a  "matter  of  sense" 
after  the  rejection  of  Kant's  assumption  of  a 
"  thing  in  itself " ;  and,  secondly,  that  Ideal- 
ism seeks  to  construct  the  world  out  of 
empty  conceptions  or  relations  of  thought. 
Both  of  these  assumptions  I  venture  to  chal- 
lenge. 

(i)  The  Kantian  doctrine  of  a  "matter  of 
sense "  stands  or  falls  with  the  assumption 
of  a  "thing  in  itself."  In  the  ^Esthetic  the 
problem  of  knowledge  is  put  by  Kant  in  this 
way:  What  is  the  element  in  the  perception 
of  objects  as  in  space  and  time  which  belongs 
to  the  subject,  and  what  is  the  element  which 
belongs  to  the  object.^  Kant's  answer  is, 
that  the  "form"  under  which  objects  are  re- 
lated spatially  and  temporally  is  due  to  the 
subject,  the  "  matter "  so  related  to  the  ob- 
ject.    Now,    in    this  contrast    of    "  form "   and 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE   OF  IDEALISM     125 

"matter,"  it  is  obviously  assumed  that  the 
subject  has  a  nature  of  its  own  independently 
of  the  object,  and  the  object  a  nature  of  its 
own  independently  of  the  subject;  in  other 
words,  that,  as  existences,  subject  and  object 
are  unrelated  to  each  other.  On  the  other 
hand  it  is  admitted  by  Kant  that  there  can 
be  no  knowledge  until  the  subject  comes  into 
relation  to  the  object. 

Now,  the  assumption  of  the  independent 
existence  of  subject  and  object  is  no  doubt  a 
very  natural  assumption,  because,  when  we 
begin  to  explain  knowledge,  we  already  have 
knowledge.  But  we  must  not  forget  that,  in 
accounting  for  the  origin  of  knowledge,  we 
have  no  right  to  assume  the  very  knowledge 
we  are  seeking  to  explain.  We  cannot  start 
from  the  independent  existence  of  subject  and 
object  unless  we  can  show  that  an  indepen- 
dent subject  and  object  can  be  known.  Before 
we  ask  what  is  contributed  by  the  subject,  and 
w^hat  comes  from  the  object,  we  must  be  sure 
that  the  separation  of  subject  and  object  is 
admissible.  If  there  is  no  known  subject 
which  does  not  imply  a  known  object,  the  ele- 


126  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

ment  belonging  to  the  one  cannot  be  sepa- 
rated from  the  element  belonging  to  the  other. 
When  Kant  asks  "  by  what  means  our  faculty 
of  knowledge  should  be  aroused  to  activity  but 
by  objects,"  he  forgets  that  neither  object  nor 
subject  exists  for  knowledge  prior  to  know- 
ledge, and  that  to  ask  how  the  subject  should 
be  "  aroused  to  activity "  by  the  object  is  to 
ask  how  a  non-existent  object  should  act  upon 
a  non-existent  subject.  This  question  cannot 
be  answered,  because  it  is  self-contradictory, 
for  to  a  self-contradictory  question  no  answer 
can  possibly  be  given. 

But  though  Kant  starts  from  the  opposi- 
tion of  subject  and  object,  he  takes,  in  the 
Esthetic,  the  first  step  to  effect  its  over- 
throw. The  real  object,  he  says,  no  doubt 
exists  apart  from  the  subject,  but  the  known 
object  does  not.  For,  in  the  perception  of 
objects,  the  relations  of  space  and  time  are 
the  manner  in  which  the  subject,  when 
"  aroused  to  activity,"  comes  to  have  a  con- 
sciousness of  objects.  So  far,  therefore,  as 
knowledge  goes,  the  object  is  not  an  inde- 
pendent  existence,   but    an    existence    in    and 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     127 

for  a  conscious  subject.  Now  this  view  leads 
to  an  important  change  in  our  ordinary  con- 
ception of  the  world.  When  we  assume  an 
objective  world,  fully  formed  and  complete 
in  itself,  apart  from  the  subject,  we  manifestly 
make  the  subject  a  mere  passive  spectator 
of  a  world  from  which  it  stands  apart ;  and 
when  we  assume  a  subject  with  a  complex 
nature  of  its  own,  we  make  the  world  en- 
tirely foreign  to  the  subject.  But  the  mo- 
ment we  ask  how  this  objective  world 
becomes  known  to  the  subject,  we  find  that 
the  independence  of  each  alternately  disap- 
pears in  the  other.  Thus,  if  the  object  is 
apprehended  by  the  subject,  and  only  in  this 
apprehension  exists  for  it,  the  whole  objec- 
tive world  is  absorbed  into  the  subject.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  ask  what  is  the  con- 
tent of  the  subject,  we  find  that  it  is  the 
object,  and  thus  the  subject  is  absorbed  in 
the  object.  Kant,  however,  does  not  carry 
over  the  object  as  a  whole  into  the  subject, 
but  draws  a  distinction  between  the  element 
which  comes  from  the  object  and  the  ele- 
ment  which   is    added    by    the    subject.       In 


128  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

this  way  the  identification  of  subject  and  ob- 
ject is  partially  arrested,  and  an  intermediate 
region  is  assumed  in  which  subject  and  ob- 
ject enter  into  relation  with  each  other.  This 
is  the  region  of  knowledge.  But,  while  this 
union  of  subject  and  object  is  the  condition 
of  knowable  reality,  subject  and  object  still 
remain  apart  as  existences.  Here,  then,  we 
have  the  "  thing  in  itself,"  as  it  appears  in 
the  yEsthetic. 

The  compromise  which  Kant  here  adopts 
is  obviously  untenable.  If  we  are  to  as- 
sume the  independent  existence  of  subject 
and  object,  we  must  not  at  the  same  time 
assume  that  the  one  is  dependent  for  its  reality 
upon  the  other.  Since  the  spatial  and  tem- 
poral relations  have  a  meaning  only  within 
knowledge,  they  can  no  more  belong  to  the 
subject  than  to  the  object,  but  only  to  the 
subject  in  so  far  as  there  has  arisen  for  it 
the  consciousness  of  an  object  determinable 
under  those  relations.  Why,  then,  does  Kant 
maintain  that  space  and  time  are  forms  of 
perception,  not  determinations  of  the  real  ? 
He    does   so   because    he    has    not  completely 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     129 

freed  himself  from  the  duaHsm  of  subject  and 
object  with  which  he  starts.  A  subject  as- 
sumed to  exist  apart  from  the  object  must 
be  regarded  as  a  pure  blank  so  far  as  know- 
ledge is  concerned ;  and  when  it  begins  to 
know  we  must  suppose  it  to  be  affected  by  the 
object.  Thus  it  is  regarded  as  purely  recep- 
tive in  its  relation  to  the  object,  and  there- 
fore it  has  to  wait  for  the  action  of  the  object 
upon  it.  Now  when  we  ask  whether  the  sub- 
ject can  be  purely  receptive,  or  whether  it 
must  not  be  affirmed  to  be  at  once  receptive 
and  conscious  of  being  receptive,  it  becomes 
manifest  that  the  whole  conception  of  a  purely 
receptive  subject  is  unmeaning.  If  the  sub- 
ject is  receptive  without  being  aware  of  it, 
it  will  simply  exist  in  a  series  of  individual 
states,  without  referring  those  states  either  to 
an  object  or  to  itself.  For  such  a  subject 
there  can  be  no  objective  world ;  for,  as  Kant 
himself  tells  us,  the  consciousness  of  objects 
implies  "  the  reference  of  sensation  to  objects 
in  perception."  On  the  other  hand,  if  the 
subject  not  only  exists  in  a  series  of  affec- 
tions, but  is  conscious  of  affections  as  coming 


I  c;o  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 


from  the  object,  it  must  distinguish  them  as 
its  own  and  yet  relate  them  to  the  object. 
But  so  far  as  it  does  so,  the  object  is  within 
knowledge,  not  a  thing  existing  by  itself. 
Thus  the  object  has  no  existence  for  the  sub- 
ject except  as  the  subject  distinguishes  it  from 
and  yet  relates  it  to  itself.  The  object  is  the 
product  of  its  own  activity,  and  hence  the 
subject  cannot  be  receptive  in  regard  to  it. 
A  subject  which  is  not  self-active  is  for  itself 
nothing.  In  truth,  a  purely  receptive  subject 
is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  It  is  only  be- 
cause Kant  does  not  distinguish  between  a 
subject  which  is  purely  sensitive  —  and  only 
by  an  abuse  of  language  can  this  be  called 
a  "subject"  at  all  —  and  a  subject  which  is 
conscious  of  its  states  as  involving  perma- 
nent relations,  that  he  allows  himself  to  speak 
of  the  subject  as  receptive  in  relation  to  the 
object.  Whatever  the  object  is,  it  is  for  a 
subject,  and  any  other  object  is  a  fiction  of 
abstraction.  We  may  legitimately  contrast 
the  object  as  known  in  fuller  determinateness 
with  the  object  as  less  determinate,  but  the 
object   is  in   either  case  a  known   object,  not 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     131 

a  "  thing  in  itself."  To  contrast  a  known  with 
an  unknown  object  is  the  greatest  of  all  ab- 
surdities, because  an  unknown  object  is  simply 
nothing  for  the  subject,  and  therefore  cannot 
be  contrasted  with  anything. 

It  follows  from  what  has  been  said  that 
there  can  be  no  opposition  between  the  "  mat- 
ter "  and  the  "  form  "  of  knowledge :  no  oppo- 
sition, that  is,  between  a  "matter"  which 
comes  from  the  object  and  a  "form"  contrib- 
uted by  the  subject.  We  must  therefore  deny 
that  affections  of  sense  as  such  enter  into 
or  form  any  element  in  knowable  objects. 
Kant  himself  admits  that  such  affections  do 
not  exist  as  an  object  for  consciousness,  but 
are  merely  the  "  manifold "  out  of  which  ob- 
jects are  formed:  they  are  the  "matter"  which 
becomes  an  object,  when  the  subject  combines 
its  determinations  under  the  form  of  time 
into  an  image  or  perception.  But  when  the 
"manifold  of  sense"  becomes  an  object,  it 
is  no  longer  a  "matter"  to  which  the  subject 
has  to  give  "form,"  but  is  already  a  formed 
matter.  The  subject  does  not  first  receive 
the  "  matter  of  sense,"  and  then  impose  upon 


132  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

it  its  own  forms ;  only  in  so  far  as  the  "  mat- 
ter "  is  already  formed  does  it  exist  for  the 
subject  at  all.  The  so-called  "  manifold  of 
sense "  is  therefore  just  the  distinguishable 
aspects  of  the  world  as  these  exist  for  the 
conscious  subject.  This  world  is  indeed 
"  manifold "  in  the  sense  of  being  infinitely 
concrete ;  but  its  concreteness  is  not  that  of 
an  aggregate  of  particulars,  but  of  a  "  cosmos 
of  experience,"  in  which  all  the  particulars 
distinguished  are  held  together  in  the  unity 
of  a  single  world,  which  exists  only  for  a  com- 
bining self-active  subject. 

(2)  The  denial  of  the  fiction  of  a  "matter 
of  sense,"  entirely  destitute  of  the  unifying 
activity  of  intelligence,  is  therefore  a  very 
different  thins:  from  the  denial  of  all  differ- 
ences  and  the  reduction  of  reality  to  a  "net- 
work of  relations."  Mr.  Balfour's  charge  that 
Idealism  reduces  the  world  to  relations,  and 
therefore  involves  the  absurdity  of  relations 
with  nothing  to  relate,  rests  upon  a  misunder- 
standing of  the  idealistic  theory  of  thought 
or  intelligence  as  the  constitutive  principle  of 
all    knowledge   and    all    reality.     What    Ideal- 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     133 

ism  maintains  is  that  the  knowable  world 
exists  only  for  a  thinking  or  self-conscious 
subject,  and  that  even  the  simplest  phase  of 
knowledge  involves  the  activity  of  that  sub- 
ject. It  is  very  inadequate  and  misleading 
to  speak  of  thought  as  if  it  consisted  solely 
in  the  relation  of  separate  elements  to  one 
another.  When  thought  is  thus  conceived,  it 
is  easy  to  understand  why  those  who  affirm 
that  the  world  exists  only  for  thought  are 
supposed  to  be  constructing  reality  out  of 
pure  abstractions.  It  is  not  difficult  to  show 
that  this  conception  is  a  survival  of  the 
old  untenable  opposition  of  perception  and 
thought,  as  dealing  respectively  with  the  par- 
ticular and  the  universal.  Let  us  take  a 
simple  case  by  way  of  illustration.  I  perceive 
a  speck  of  light  in  the  surrounding  darkness. 
Taking  the  old  abstract  view,  we  have  here 
the  simple  apprehension  of  a  particular  sen- 
sible object,  without  any  exercise  of  the  activ- 
ity of  thought.  The  latter  comes  into  play 
only  when  I  compare  various  perceptions  with 
each  other.  Such  a  doctrine  was  virtually 
disposed  of  when  Kant  showed   that  the  sim- 


134  ^-^^  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

plest  perception  already  involves  the  synthetic 
activity  of  thought.  My  apprehension  of  the 
speck  of  light  is  by  no  means  simple.  The 
moment  I  have  the  sensation,  my  mind  goes 
to  work,  seeking  to  put  it  in  its  proper  place 
in  relation  to  the  rest  of  my  experience. 
There  are  no  doubt  occasions  in  my  indi- 
vidual life  in  which  this  interpretative  power 
is  almost  entirely  in  abeyance,  as  when  I 
have  just  awaked  from  sleep,  or  emerged 
from  a  swoon.  But  even  in  these  states  the 
activity  of  intelligence  is  not  entirely  absent; 
for  I  at  least  distinguish  the  speck  of  light 
from  the  surrounding  darkness;  I  locate  it 
with  more  or  less  accuracy;  and  I  distinguish 
it  from  myself  as  a  particular  object.  Now 
we  have  here  one  of  the  simplest  forms  in 
which  the  thinking  subject  builds  up  for  him- 
self an  intelligible  world.  Without  the  sensi- 
tivity to  light,  there  would  be  for  the  subject 
no  object  at  all;  but  without  the  interpreta- 
tive activity  of  thought  the  sensitivity  would 
have  no  meaning,  i.e.  it  would  not  be  grasped 
as  a  particular  phase  of  a  single  world.  Per- 
ception is,  therefore,  not  the  mere  presence  of 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     135 

a  particular  sensation  or  image,  but  the  dis- 
crimination of  its  elements,  and  the  compre- 
hension of  these  as  involving  certain  fixed 
conditions  under  which  they  occur.  If  we 
exclude  the  interpretative  activity  of  thought 
there  is  for  us  no  object ;  and,  therefore,  no 
knowledge.  It  is  only  because  this  grasp  of 
the  particular  as  an  instance  of  fixed  con- 
nexion in  experience  is  overlooked,  that  per- 
ception is  supposed  to  be  possible  without  the 
combined  distinction  and  unification  which  is 
due  to  the  activity  of  the  thinking  subject. 
But  this  activity  is  not  the  external  relation 
of  individual  sensations.  Sensibility  as  such 
is  not  an  object  of  knowledge,  but  only  partic- 
ular sensations  grasped  as  indicating  fixed  con- 
nexions in  their  occurrence.  Hence  thought 
is  present  in  what  is  called  sensation,  in  so  far 
as  sensation  enters  into  our  experience ;  and 
when  present  it  interprets  sensation  by  refer- 
ence to  its  fixed  conditions.  The  content  of 
sensation  docs  not  fall  without,  but  within 
thought;  and  it  is  this  thought  content  which 
constitutes  the  world  of  our  perception.  That 
world  is  from  the  first  a  connected  whole,  in 


136  THE  CHRISTTAlSr  WEAL   OF  LIFE 

which  every  element  is  on  the  one  hand  re- 
ferred to  a  single  world,  and  on  the  other 
hand  to  a  single  subject.  Nor  can  the  one 
be  separated  from  the  other,  for  the  unity  of 
the  world  is  made  possible  by  the  unifying 
activity  of  the  subject.  It  must  also  be  ob- 
served that  this  unifying  activity  is  not  the 
activity  of  a  principle  which  merely  operates 
through  the  individual  subject:  it  is  essen- 
tially the  activity  of  a  self-determining  sub- 
ject, which  is  conscious  of  a  single  world  only 
in  so  far  as  in  every  phase  of  its  experience 
it  is  self-active.  The  degree  in  which  the 
world  is  comprehended  is  proportionate  to 
the  self-activity  of  the  intelligent  subject;  and 
thus  the  world,  while  it  never  loses  its  unity, 
is  continually  growing  in  complexity  and  sys- 
tematic unity.  There  is  a  single  self-consist- 
ent world,  because  the  world  is  a  systematic 
unity,  and  because  reason  in  all  self-conscious 
beings  is  an  organic  unity,  identical  in  nature, 
but  distinct  in  its  individual  activity.  Mr. 
Balfour  assumes  that  the  denial  of  a  given 
"matter  of  sense"  is  the  same  thing  as  the 
denial    of    all    determinate    reality.      But,    in 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     137 

truth,  the  denial  of  the  former  is  essential 
to  the  preservation  of  the  latter.  It  is  only 
in  so  far  as  the  sensible  is  discriminated  by- 
thought,  that  there  is  any  determinate  object 
of  knowledge ;  and  it  is  only  in  so  far  as 
these  discriminated  elements  are  combined 
by  the  activity  of  a  single  subject,  that  there 
is  any  unity  of  experience.  The  thinking 
subject  cannot  have  before  him  any  object 
without  grasping  it  by  thought,  or  interpret- 
ing his  immediate  feelings  by  reference  to 
the  idea,  explicit  or  implicit,  of  a  connected 
system  of  reality.  What  Idealism  maintains, 
therefore,  is  that  the  impossibility  of  having 
the  consciousness  of  any  object  which  cannot 
be  combined  with  the  consciousness  of  self  is 
a  proof  that  the  world  is  a  rational  system. 
The  whole  process  of  knowledge  consists  in 
the  ever  more  complete  reduction  of  partic- 
ulars to  the  unity  of  an  organic  whole;  and, 
though  it  is  true  that  a  complete  knowledge 
of  the  world  is  never  attained.  Idealism  affirms 
that,  were  knowledge  complete,  the  world 
would  be  found  to  be  rational  throu<;h  and 
through.      Perhaps    what  has    been    said    will 


138  'THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OE  LITE 

help  to  show  that  what  Idealism  denies  is 
not  that  the  world  is  concrete,  but  that  its 
concreteness  can  be  explained  by  any  theory 
which  starts  from  the  fiction  of  an  irreducible 
"matter  of  sense,"  i,e,  a  "matter"  assumed 
to  be    absolutely  opaque    to  a  rational   being. 

Mr.  Balfour  assumes  that  thought  deals 
purely  with  abstractions  or  relations,  and  it 
is  on  this  ground  that  he  charges  Idealism 
with  "constituting  the  universe  out  of  cate- 
gories." The  falsity  of  this  view  has  already 
been  indicated,  but  the  point  is  so  important 
that  it  seems  advisable  to  dwell  upon  it 
somewhat  more  fully,  especially  as  even  Mr. 
Bradley  seems  to  me  to  have  lent  the  weight 
of  his  authority  to  what  I  must  regard  as 
the  survival  of  an  obsolete  mode  of  thought. 

There  can  be  no  thought  whatever,  whether 
it  takes  the  form  of  conception,  judgment,  or 
inference,  unless  thought  is  itself  a  principle 
of  unity.  This  unity,  however,  must  not  be 
conceived  as  working  by  the  method  of  ab- 
straction, but  as  manifesting  itself  in  the  dis- 
tinction and  combination  of  differences.  We 
can,  no  doubt,  fix  our  attention  upon  the  unity 


STATEMENT  AND   DEEENCE  OE  IDEALISM     139 

which  Is  implied  in  every  act  of  thought,  but 
we  cannot  affirm  that  thought  is  a  unity 
which  excludes  differences.  Thought  is  thus 
the  universal  capacity  of  combining  differ- 
ences in  a  unity.  Now,  if  thought  is  by  its 
very  nature  a  unity,  there  can  be  no  absolute 
separation  between  the  various  elements  which 
it  combines  —  no  separation,  that  is,  within 
thought  itself.  It  is  perhaps  not  impossible 
that  there  are  real  elements  which  thouo^ht 
cannot  reduce  to  unity,  but  within  thought 
itself  there  can  be  no  such  elements:  ele- 
ments which  are  not  combined  are  not 
thought.  We  cannot  therefore  regard  the 
organism  of  thought  as  made  up  of  a  num- 
ber of  independent  conceptions  or  ideas  hav- 
ing no  relation  to  one  another;  the  whole  of 
our  conceptions  taken  together  form  the 
unity  which  thought  by  its  activity  consti- 
tutes. Conception  is  thus  the  process  in 
which  the  distinguishable  aspects  of  the  real 
world,  or  what  we  believe  to  be  the  real 
world,  are  combined  in  the  unity  of  a  single 
system.  This  process  may  be  viewed  either 
as  a   progressive  differentiation   or  as   a   pro- 


140  THE  CHRIST/AN  WEAL   OF  LIFE 

gressive  unification.  And  these  two  aspects 
are  essentially  correlative:  conception  reaches 
a  higher  stage  according  as  it  unites  a  greater 
number  of  differences,  and  it  cannot  unite 
without  distinguishing.  It  is  of  great  impor- 
tance to  keep  hold  of  this  truth.  To  neglect 
it  is  to  make  a  consistent  theory  of  know- 
ledge impossible.  If  conception  is  a  process 
of  abstraction,  thought  can  by  no  possibility 
comprehend  reality.  The  importance  of  the 
subject  will  excuse  a  few  remarks  upon  the 
nature  of  "conception"  and  its  relation  to 
judgment. 

Conception  may  be  regarded  as  the  termina- 
tion or  as  the  beginning  of  a  judgment,  accord- 
ing to  our  point  of  view.  In  the  former  case 
conception  condenses,  or  holds  in  a  transpar- 
ent unity,  the  distinguishable  elements  which 
have  been  combined  in  a  prior  judgment,  or 
rather  it  is  the  synthetic  unity  of  a  number 
of  prior  judgments.  Thus  the  conception 
"light"  comprehends  the  prior  judgments 
by  which  the  object  "light"  has  entered 
into  the  world  of  our  thought.  Hence  it  is 
that    judgment     has     been     supposed     to    be 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     141 

merely  the  analysis  of  a  given  conception. 
But  no  analysis  of  a  conception  can  yield 
more  than  has  previously  been  combined. 
The  name  "  light "  stands  for  more  or  fewer 
judgments  according  to  the  stage  of  thought 
of  the  individual  who  employs  it.  A  so-called 
analytic  judgment  is  simply  the  explicit  state- 
ment of  judgments  already  made,  and  adds 
nothing  to  the  wealth  of  the  thought-world. 
It  is  true  that  the  resolution  of  a  conception 
into  the  judgments  which  it  presupposes  may 
be  the  occasion  of  a  new  judgment.  It  is  so 
when  we  for  the  first  time  observe  that  a  con- 
ception does  presuppose  a  number  of  judg- 
ments ;  but  in  this  case  we  have  done  more 
than  merely  analyse  the  conception  into  its 
constituent  elements :  we  have  brouoht  to 
light  the  nature  of  conception  and  its  relation 
to  judgment. 

It  is  characteristic  of  every  real  judgment  — 
every  judgment  which  is  more  than  the  repro- 
duction of  a  judgment  formerly  made — that 
it  combines  in  a  new  unity  elements  not  pre- 
viously combined.  Can  we  then  say  that  judg- 
ment is  the  combination  of  conceptions  ?     Not 


142  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

if  we  mean  by  this  that  the  conceptions  remain 
in  the  judgment  what  they  were  prior  to  the 
judgment.  A  conception  being  the  condensed 
result  of  prior  judgments  in  which  distinguish- 
able elements  of  reality  have  been  united,  it 
forms  the  starting-point  for  new  judgments, 
but  each  of  these  new  judgments  is  the 
further  comprehension  of  the  real,  and  there- 
fore the  conception  grows  richer  in  content 
with  each  judgment.  Thus  if,  starting  from 
the  ordinary  conception  of  "light,"  we  go  on 
to  judge  that  it  is  "due  to  the  vibration  of 
an  aether,"  we  do  not  simply  add  a  new 
predicate  to  the  subject,  but  the  conception 
is  itself  transformed  and  enriched.  Judg- 
ment is  thus  conception  viewed  as  in  pro- 
cess, and  a  conception  is  any  stage  in  that 
process.  The  distinction  is  purely  relative. 
In  judgment  thought  unifies  the  elements 
which  it  discriminates ;  in  conception  the 
elements  are  viewed  as  united  even  while 
they  are  discriminated.  For  it  must  be 
observed  that  thought  never  unifies  with- 
out discriminating :  the  whole  process  of 
thouGjht     is     concrete     throu^^hout,     and,     as 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     143 

knowledge  develops,  becomes  more  and  more 
concrete.  We  are  therefore  entitled  to  say 
that  for  the  thinking  subject  reality  is  in 
continual  process,  and  we  are  also  entitled 
to  say  that  there  is  neither  thinking  subject 
nor  thought  reality  outside  of  the  process  of 
thought.  A  real  world  which  is  not  capable 
of  being  thought  is  for  the  subject  nothing, 
and  a  subject  which  is  not  capable  of  think- 
ing the  real  world  is  also  nothing. 

If  this  view  is  correct,  it  is  misleading  to 
say,  with  Mr.  Bradley,  that  "in  judgment  an 
idea  is  predicated  of  a  reality."  ^  For  the 
reality  of  which  we  judge  is  a  reality  which 
exists  only  for  thought,  and  it  has  no  content 
except  that  which  it  has  received  in  the  pro- 
cess by  which  it  is  constituted  for  thought. 
Mr.  Bradley  tells  us  that  whatever  we  regard 
as  real  has  two  aspects,  [a)  existence,  {b)  con- 
tent, and  that  "  thought  seems  essentially  to 
consist  in  their  division."  Now,  it  is  no  doubt 
true  that,  if  we  suppose  the  real  to  be  some- 
thing which  exists  apart  from  thought,  we 
shall    have   to   divide  or  separate  the  "  what " 

*  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  163. 


144  '^^^  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

from  the  "  that."  But  there  is  for  us  no 
real  in  addition  to  the  real  which  is  thought. 
Such  a  real  is  a  pure  abstraction,  and  means 
no  more  than  the  empty  possibility  of  the  real. 
We  cannot  separate  in  this  hypothetical  real 
between  the  "  that "  and  the  "  what,"  because, 
having  no  content,  it  is  neither  a  "  that "  nor  a 
"  what."  The  real  only  comes  to  be  for  us 
in  so  far  as  there  has  gone  on  a  process  of 
discrimination  and  unification  within  a  sin- 
gle reality,  by  means  of  which  the  real  has 
been  constituted  as  a  thought  or  ideal  reality. 
What  Mr.  Bradley  calls  the  "  that "  seems  to 
me  merely  a  name  for  the  unity  which  is  in- 
volved in  every  phase  of  the  process  by  which 
reality  is  thought ;  and  what  he  calls  the 
"  what "  is  a  name  for  the  elements  which 
thought  distinguishes  and  combines  in  the 
unity  of  the  real.  The  "  that  "  has  therefore  no 
determinateness  when  it  is  separated  from  the 
"  what " ;  it  is  simply  pure  being,  or  the  bare 
potentiality  of  a  thought  reality.  Mr.  Bradley 
allows  himself  to  speak  of  the  "  what "  as  if  it 
were  first  "  presented  "  in  unity  with  the  "  that," 
and    of    judgment    as    if    it   consisted    in    the 


STATEMENT  AND   DEEENCE  OE  IDEALISM     145 

"  division  "  of  the  "what  " from  the  "  that."  But 
surely  there  is  no  "  what "  except  that  which 
thought  has  ah'eady  made  its  own.  The  sub- 
ject of  any  judgment  has  already  a  content,  it 
is  true,  and  this  content  we  may  express  in  the 
form  of  a  series  of  judgments ;  but  these  judg- 
ments will  merely  reproduce  the  judgments 
formerly  made :  they  will  add  nothing  to 
knowledge.  Every  new  judgment,  on  the 
other  hand,  determines  the  conceived  reality 
from  w^hich  we  start :  it  transforms  the  reality 
for  thought,  and  thus  enriches  it  by  a  new 
determination.  There  would  be  no  reason  for 
judging  at  all  if  judgment  merely  consisted 
in  detaching  a  "content  "  from  "  existence,"  and 
then  proceeding  to  attach  it  to  "  existence." 
The  "  existence  "  and  the  "  content  "  are  one 
and  indivisible,  and  as  the  one  grows,  so  also 
does  the  other.  Mr.  Bradley  says  that  "an 
idea  implies  the  separation  of  content  from 
existence."  And  no  doubt  in  every  judgment 
the  "  content  "  is  held  suspended  in  thought 
before  it  is  predicated  of  the  subject.  But,  in 
the  first  place,  so  long  as  it  is  so  held,  there  is 
no  judgment:  judgment  consists  in  determin- 


146  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

ing  the  subject  by  the  predicate.  And,  in  the 
second  place,  the  content  which  is  thus  predi- 
cated of  the  subject  is  not  the  content  which 
is  ah'eady  involved  in  the  subject,  and  there- 
fore we  cannot  say  that  judgment  consists  in 
the  separation  of  the  "  what  "  from  the  "  that." 
When  the  scientific  man  affirms  that  light  is 
due  to  the  vibration  of  an  aether,  he  does  not 
separate  the  "  content "  already  involved  in  the 
conception  of  the  luminous  object,  and  then 
predicate  this  "  content  "  of  the  subject ;  what 
he  does  is  to  determine  the  already  qualified 
subject  by  a  totally  new  "  content "  which  it 
did  not  previously  possess,  and  in  this  deter- 
mination of  the  subject  the  judgment  consists. 
It  thus  seems  to  me  that  Mr.  Bradley  gives 
countenance  to  two' fallacies ;  first,  that  the 
subject  is  a  mere  "  that  "  instead  of  being  the 
condensed  result  of  the  whole  prior  process  of 
thought ;  and,  secondly,  that  judgment  con- 
sists in  the  separation  of  a  given  content  from 
the  "  that,"  a  content  which  is  then  attributed 
to  the  "that";  whereas  judgment  consists  in 
the  predication  of  a  new  content,  which  de- 
velops   and    enriches    the    "  that."      Whatever 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     147 

difficulty  attaches  to  this  view  arises,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  from  the  assumption  that  reahty 
exists  apart  from  the  process  by  which  it  is 
thought.  And  no  doubt  reahty  is  not  made 
by  thought  in  the  sense  of  being  the  creation 
of  the  individual  thinking  subject,  but  it  is 
made  for  the  subject  in  the  sense  that  nothing 
is  or  can  be  real  for  him  which  is  not  revealed 
to  him  in  the  process  by  which  he  thinks  it  as 
real. 

When  Mr.  Bradley  says  that  "the  subject 
has  unspecified  content  which  is  not  stated  in 
the  predicate"  (168),  he  is  evidently  confusing 
"  the  subject "  with  reality,  as  it  would  be 
could  it  be  completely  determined  by  thought. 
But  such  a  subject  is  not  the  "that"  which  is 
distinguished  from  the  "  what,"  for  the  "  that  "  is 
merely  the  abstraction  of  reality,  —  the  abstract 
idea  of  reality  in  general  which  is  no  reality  in 
particular.  Such  a  subject  has  no  "  unspecified 
content,"  because  it  has  no  content  whatever. 
But  if  by  the  "  subject "  is  meant  the  complete 
system  of  reality,  it  is  no  doubt  true  that  it  has 
"unspecified  content  which  is  not  stated  in  the 
predicate."      No  single  judgment  can  express 


148  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

the  infinite  wealth  of  the  totaHty  of  reaHt}^ 
And  not  only  is  this  true,  but  no  single  judg- 
ment can  express  the  wealth  of  reality  even  as 
it  exists  for  the  subject  who  frames  the  judg- 
ment. We  can  only  express  the  nature  of 
reality  in  the  totality  of  judgments  which  ex- 
press the  nature  of  reality  as  known  to  us,  and 
it  is  manifestly  an  inadequate  or  partial  view 
which  seeks  to  limit  known  reality  to  that  as- 
pect of  it  which  is  expressed  in  a  single  judg- 
ment. But  we  must  go  still  further;  not  only 
is  known  reality  not  expressed  in  any  single 
judgment,  but  it  is  not  expressed  in  the  whole 
system  of  judgments  which  embody  the  know- 
ledge of  man  as  it  exists  at  any  given  time. 
Our  knowledge  is  not  complete,  and  I  do  not 
see  how  it  ever  can  be  complete.  In  that  sense 
reality  or  the  absolute  must  always  be  un- 
known. But  unless  reality  in  its  true  nature 
is  different  in  kind  from  the  reality  which  we 
know,  it  must  be  thinkable  reality.  Any  other 
reality  than  that  which  is  thinkable  can  have 
no  community  with  thought  reality,  but  must 
be  absolutely  unknowable.  It  is  not  main- 
tained  that   there   is   no   reality   which   is   not 


STATEMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     149 

thought  by  us,  but  only  that  the  reahty  which 
we  know  is  thought  reahty.  This  reahty 
enters  into  our  thought  and  forms  its  content, 
and  as  the  content  continually  expands  for  us, 
so  the  reality  continually  expands.  Reflecting 
upon  this  characteristic  of  knowledge,  we  get 
the  notion  of  a  completely  determined  reality, 
a  reality  which  would  be  present  to  thought 
if  thought  were  absolutely  complete.  Such  a 
reality  we  do  not  possess,  and  it  is  therefore 
natural  to  say  that  there  is  a  defect  in  the 
character  of  our  thought  which  prevents  us 
from  grasping  reality  in  its  completeness. 
This  explanation  seems  to  me  to  rest  upon 
the  assumption  that  reality  cannot  be  thought 
because  thought  deals  only  with  abstractions. 
But,  as  I  have  maintained  above,  thought  is 
never  abstract ;  it  contains  within  itself  the 
whole  wealth  of  reality,  so  far  as  reality  is 
known  to  us.  The  defect  is  not  in  the  char- 
acter of  thought,  as  distinguished  from  feeling 
or  intuition,  but  in  the  very  nature  of  man  as 
a  being  in  whom  knowledge  is  a  never-ending 
process.  What  I  contend  for,  then,  is  not  that 
man    has    complete  knowledge  of    reality,  —  a 


1 50  THE   CHRIST/AN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

contention  which  is  manifestly  absurd,  —  but 
that  reahty  in  its  completeness  must  be  a  think- 
able reality.  Any  other  view  seems  to  me  to 
lead  to  the  caput  mortuum  of  the  thing-in-itself, 
the  reality  which  cannot  be  thought  because  it 
is  unthinkable.  When,  therefore,  Mr.  Bradley 
says  that  it  is  an  untenable  position  to  maintain 
that  "  in  reality  there  is  nothing  beyond  what 
is  made  thought's  object"  (169),  I  agree  with  a 
caveat.  That  there  is  nothing  which  is  not 
made  "  thought's  object "  is  manifestly  untrue, 
if  the  "thought"  here  spoken  of  is  thought 
as  it  exists  for  man.  But,  if  it  is  meant  that 
there  is  in  reality  something  which  cannot  be 
made  the  object  of  thought,  because  it  is 
unthinkable,  I  do  not  see  what  sort  of  reality 
this  can  be;  to  me  it  seems  to  be  merely  a 
name  for  a  metaphysical  abstraction.  Reality 
that  cannot  be  thought  is  a  sort  of  reality 
to  which  I  find  myself  unable  to  attach 
any  meaning,  and  until  I  find  some  one 
who  can  oive  a  meaninQ^  to  it,  I  refuse  to 
admit  its  possibility.  But  I  feel  certain  tliat 
such  a  person  cannot  be  found,  for  the  obvi- 
ous reason   that   if   this   supposititious    reality 


STATEMENT  AND   DEFENCE  OF  IDEALISM     151 

had    a    meaning,  it   would    no    longer    be    un- 
thinkable. 

If  these  considerations  are  at  all  correct,  the 
only  reality  which  has  any  meaning  for  us  is 
reality  that  is  capable  of  being  thought.  And 
this  reality  is  not  for  us  stationary,  but  grows 
in  content  as  thought,  which  is  the  faculty 
of  unifying  the  distinguishable  elements  of 
reality,  develops  in  the  process  by  which 
those  elements  are  more  fully  distinguished 
and  unified.  The  reality  w^hich  thus  enters 
into  and  constitutes  our  thought  is  therefore 
not  abstract  but  infinitely  concrete.  For,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  process  of  thought  is  not 
the  mere  transition  from  one  conception  to 
another,  but  it  is  the  internal  development 
of  conception,  which  is  at  the  same  time  the 
development  of  the  conceived  world.  The 
reality,  therefore,  which  thus  arises  for  us  in 
the  process  of  thought  is  a  system,  in  which 
there  is  revealed  an  ever  greater  diversity 
brought  back  into  an  ever  more  complete 
unity.  And  this  reality  is  the  absolute,  so 
far  as  the  absolute  enters  into  and  consti- 
tutes   our    known    world.       To    seek    for    the 


152  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

absolute  beyond  the  thought  reality,  which 
alone  exists  for  us,  Is  to  seek  the  living 
among  the  dead ;  If  the  absolute  is  not 
revealed  to  us  In  the  reality  that  we  know, 
it  is  for  us  nothing. 


CHAPTER   VII 

IDEALISM    IN    RELATION    TO    AGNOSTICISM    AND 
THE    SPECIAL    SCIENCES 

I.    AGNOSTICISM 

In  the  preceding  chapter  an  attempt  has 
been  made  to  explain  and  defend  the  gen- 
eral doctrine  of  Idealism,  which  affirms  that 
the  knowable  world  is  identical  with  the 
world  as  it  really  is,  and  is  a  systematic  or 
rational  unity.  This  doctrine  is  of  course 
diametrically  opposed  to  Agnosticism.  In  a 
former  work"^  it  was  maintained  that  Agnosti- 
cism is  a  self-contradictory  theory,  because  in 
affirming  an  absolute  limit  to  human  know- 
ledge, it  assumes  the  knowledge  of  a  realm  of 
reality  distinct  from  the  realm  of  phenomena, 
and  tacitly  affirms  that  there  arc  two  kinds  of 
intelligence,  corresponding  to  these  two  realms. 
Two  objections  have  been  raised  which  it  may 

*  Conite^  A/ill^  and  Spencer,  Chaj).  II. 


154  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

be  well  to  consider.  It  is  objected,  firstly,  that 
my  criticism  applies  only  to  a  dogmatic  affir- 
mation or  denial  of  a  noumenal  reality;  and, 
secondly,  that  even  if  such  a  reality  is  ad- 
mitted, it  is  not  a  legitimate  inference  that  its 
advocates  are  bound  in  consistency  to  assume 
two  kinds  of  intelligence. 

(i)  As  to  the  first  point,  it  must  be  an- 
swered, that  a  purely  sceptical  attitude  is 
impossible.  Such  an  attitude  would  mean, 
presumably,  that  he  who  assumes  it  refuses 
to  say  whether  there  is  any  reality  other 
than  that  which  is  known  by  us:  there  may, 
or  may  not,  be  such  a  reality,  but  we  are  not 
in  a  position  to  give  any  answer  either  positive 
or  negative.  Now,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  any 
one  can  affirm  that  we  are  unable  to  say 
whether  that  which  we  call  reality  is  or  is 
not  reality,  without  basing  his  affirmation 
upon  some  limitation  in  the  nature  of  our 
faculty  of  knowledge.  Surely  the  inability 
on  our  part  to  determine  whether  we  have 
any  knowledge  of  reality  or  not,  implies  that 
our  faculty  of  knowledge  is  by  its  very  nature 
unable  to  distinguish  between  truth  and  false- 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATIOiV  TO  AGNOSTICISM     155 

hood.  But  if  we  cannot  distinguish  between 
truth  and  falsehood,  no  proposition  whatever 
can  be  held  by  us  to  be  either  true  or  false ; 
and  therefore  our  affirmation  that  we  cannot 
distinguish  between  truth  or  falsehood  can- 
not be  accepted  as  true.  If  it  is  not  true, 
there  is  no  affirmation  whatever,  but  only 
the  delusive  appearance  of  affirmation;  and 
to  such  a  delusive  appearance  we  can  attach 
no  meaning;  it  may  be  either  the  affirmation 
or  denial  of  reality  or  some  tertmm  qtcid ;  it  is, 
in  fact,  that  logical  monster,  an  affirmative- 
negative  proposition.  In  short,  if  you  make 
any  judgment  whatever  which  means  any- 
thing, you  have  assumed  the  reality  of  your 
judgment,  though  not  of  what  you  affirm 
or  deny  in  your  judgment;  and  thus  you 
have  assumed  that  so  far  at  least  you  have 
touched  solid  reality.  A  purely  sceptical 
attitude  is  thus  a  contradiction  in  terms, — 
an  affirmation  which  affirms  nothing,  or  a 
denial  which  denies  nothing.  The  most 
complete  sceptic  that  ever  lived  assumed 
that  his  scepticism  was  real,  and  to  that 
extent  he  was  a  dogmatist. 


156  THE  CHRISTIAN-  WEAL   OF  LIFE 

(2)  It  is  further  maintained  that  even  if  the 
distinction  between  the  phenomenal  and  the 
real  is  admitted,  it  does  not  follow  that  there 
must  be  two  kinds  of  intelligence  corre- 
sponding to  these  two  realms.  After  what 
has  been  said,  it  must  be  obvious  that  this 
objection  is  unsound.  For,  if  our  intelligence 
is  not  capable  of  knowing  reality,  it  must  be 
because  of  an  absolute  limit  in  the  character 
of  our  intelligence,  and  if  that  limit  were  re- 
moved reality,  admitting  it  to  exist,  would  be 
capable  of  being  grasped  by  us.  Now,  the 
dogmatic  phenomenalist,  and  even,  as  has 
been  shown,  the  so-called  sceptical  phenome- 
nalist, assumes  that  there  is  reality.  No 
western  thinker,  so  far  as  I  know,  has  had 
the  courage  to  affirm  that  there  is  no  reality 
whatever:  that  sublime  height  has  been 
reached  only  in  the  east.  Now,  if  there  is 
reality  at  all,  it  must  be  comprehensible  by 
some  intelligence.  It  may  be  said  that  there 
is  no  such  intelligence,  or  at  least  that  we 
cannot  know  that  there  is  such  an  intelli- 
gence. But  surely  we  are  entitled  to  de- 
mand   that    no    affirmation    should    be    made 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO  AGNOSTICISM     157 

which  is  meaningless.  The  })lienomenahst, 
then,  admits  that  there  is  reahty,  and  in  so 
doing  he  assumes  that  he  is  saying  some- 
thing' which  has  a  meanino-  for  himself,  and 
for  others  who  hear  or  read  what  he  says. 
Now  what  is  a  reality  which  is  not  a  real- 
ity for  some  intelligence }  Make  any  predi- 
cation you  like  about  it,  and  you  will  find 
that,  if  you  mean  anything  at  all,  you  mean 
that  it  is  present  to  an  intelligence.  If  you 
refuse  to  make  any  predication  about  it,  it 
is  not  reality  but  pure  nothingness.  Hence 
you  cannot  say :  "  There  is  reality,"  without 
assuming  that  reality  has  a  meaning,  and  to 
say  that  it  has  a  meaning  is  to  say  that  it  is 
relative  to  some  intelligence.  Now  the  phe- 
nomenalist  affirms  that  reality  is  not  the 
object  of  his  intelligence,  and  therefore  it 
must  be  the  object  of  some  other  intelli- 
gence, or  it  is  nothing  at  all.  And  this  other 
intelligence  cannot  involve  an  absolute  limit, 
as  our  intelligence  is  assumed  to  do,  because 
if  it  did  it  would  not  grasp  reality  but  only 
appearance;  in  other  words,  the  phenomenalist 
in  affirming  the  absolute  limitation  of  his  own 


158  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

intelligence  has  tacitly  assumed  an  intelli- 
gence free  from  limits.  I  was  therefore  right 
in  saying  that  from  the  doctrine  of  the  rela- 
tivity of  knowledge  it  is  a  legitimate  infer- 
ence that  there  are  two  kinds  of  intelligence, 
one  absolutely  limited  and  the  other  abso- 
lutely unlimited.  The  absurdity  of  this  doc- 
trine I  shall  not  again  insist  upon :  I  shall 
only  repeat  that  an  intelligence  which  is 
absolutely  limited  would  never  know  that  it 
was  absolutely  limited,  since  in  that  case  it 
would  be  beyond  the  assumed  limits. 

Now  if  it  is  admitted  that  there  is  a  ra- 
tional or  intelligible  system  of  things,  it  is 
obvious  that  with  this  single  system  all  the 
sciences  must  deal.  Reality  is  one,  and  to 
suppose  it  split  up  into  bits  by  the  concen- 
tration of  attention  upon  one  phase  of  it,  is 
to  be  the  victim  of  an  abstraction.  When  in 
geometry  we  define  a  point  or  line,  we  are 
not  dealing  with  a  "  mere  idea,"  but  with  a 
fixed  relation  holding  for  every  subject  for 
whom  there  is  any  reality  whatever.  Simi- 
larly, all  the  judgments  of  geometry  imply 
that    there    are    unchanuinir    relations    in    the 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO  AGNOSTICISM     159 

one  system  of  reality  which  alone  is  or  can 
be  known,  and  these  unchanging  relations 
constitute  the  objectivity  of  that  system,  so 
far  as  it  comes  within  the  view  of  geometry. 
This  does  not  mean  that  there  is  a  world 
constituted  of  nothing  but  geometrical  rela- 
tions, but  it  does  mean  that  a  world  from 
which  all  geometrical  relations  are  eliminated 
is  unthinkable.  If  geometrical  relations  are 
not  determinations  of  the  real  world,  all  the 
sciences  of  nature  are  made  impossible,  and, 
as  a  consequence,  the  whole  of  the  philo- 
sophical sciences  as  well.  What  is  said  of 
spatial  relations,  of  course,  holds  good  also  of 
temporal  relations.  And  when  we  pass  from 
the  mathematical  determination  of  reality 
to  the  dynamical  —  from  space  and  time  to 
matter  and  motion  —  the  same  principle  of 
explanation  still  applies.  For  dynamical  re- 
lations are  real  aspects  of  the  one  system 
of  reality,  while  yet  they  do  not  exhaust  its 
nature.  It  is  as  great  a  mistake  to  deny 
that  those  relations  are  determinations  of  the 
absolute  as  to  affirm  that  in  them  we  have 
reached    an    exhaustive    delinition    of    it.     A 


l6o  THE  CHRrSTIAN  WEAL   OF  LIFE 

world  of  matter  and  motion  is  real  in  the 
same  sense  that  a  world  of  space  or  a  world 
of  time  is  real ;  withotU  dynamical  relations 
there  could  be  no  reality  whatever,  but  a 
reality  consisting  of  these  relations  alone  —  a 
world  of  pure  matter  and  motion  —  is  as  im- 
possible as  a  world  of  pure  space  or  pure 
time.  They  are  real,  unchangeable  aspects  of 
existence,  but  they  are  no  more  than  aspects. 
For,  though  there  would  be  no  real  world 
were  the  relations  or  laws  of  dynamics  not 
unchangeable,  there  are  other  aspects  of  real- 
ity which  still  further  define  existence.  Cer- 
tain of  these  aspects  are  brought  to  light  by 
physics,  chemistry,  and  biology.  Here  again 
we  may  say  that  what  the  sciences  affirm 
they  affirm  of  the  absolute,  but  we  cannot 
say  that  now  at  last  we  have  reached  the 
ultimate  or  complete  determination  of  it.  All 
the  sciences,  from  mathematics  to  biology 
inclusive,  are  abstract  in  this  sense,  that 
there  are  other  aspects  of  reality  which  they 
presuppose.  These  new  aspects  of  the  one 
single  system  of  reality  form  the  subject- 
matter    of    the    philosophical    sciences,    which 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO  MATHEMATICS     i6l 

again  presuppose  logic  or  metaphysic  as 
the  science  which  deals  directly  with  the  in- 
terrelation of  all  the  principles  upon  which 
the  other  sciences  are  based. 


11.     MATHEMATICS 

The  view  which  has  just  been  indicated 
implies  that  mathematics  is  a  science,  i.e. 
contains  propositions  which  are  true  or  hold 
of  reality.  These  propositions  are,  as  I  be- 
lieve, true  formulations  of  fundamental  condi- 
tions or  relations  by  which  the  real  world  is 
characterised,  though  they  are  certainly  not 
a  formulation  of  all  those  conditions.  What 
is  held  is  not  that  mathematics  formulates 
"  the  intellectual  conditions  of  sensible  real- 
ity," if  this  means  that  there  is  an  absolute 
separation  between  "sensible  reality"  and  an- 
other reality  which  may  be  defined  as  non- 
sensible.  There  are  not  two  realities,  but 
only  one.  What  is  called  "  sensible  reality " 
is  either  the  fiction  of  a  world  supposed  to 
be  given  in  immediate  sensation,  or  it  is  a 
term  for   certain   aspects    of    the    one    reality, 


1 62  THE  CHRISTIAN-  WEAL   OF  LIFE 

the  only  reality  there  is.  To  speak  of  "sen- 
sible reality"  as  contrasted  with  non-sensible 
or  supersensible  reality  is  to  fall  back  into 
that  untenable  phenomenalism,  the  contradic- 
tory character  of  which  has  already  been  main- 
tained. Mathematics,  then,  concentrates  its 
attention  upon  certain  very  simple  conditions 
or  relations  of  the  one  and  only  reality,  and, 
as  I  believe,  is  successful  in  formulating  their 
nature. 

It  may  be  objected,  however,  that  this  view 
of  mathematics  takes  no  account  of  the  re- 
cent doctrine  that  Euclidean  geometry  merely 
states  the  conditions  of  our  space  of  three 
dimensions.  Now  it  might  fairly  be  answered 
that  it  is  incumbent  upon  the  advocates  of 
imaginary  geometry  to  reconcile  their  doctrine 
with  any  tenable  theory  of  knowledge.  Does 
their  hypothetical  space  of  four  or  more  di- 
mensions contradict  our  space  of  three  dimen- 
sions ?  If  it  does,  they  deny  the  principle 
of  contradiction,  contradict  themselves,  and 
can  prove  neither  the  reality  of  a  space  of 
four  nor  a  space  of  three  dimensions,  since 
they   cannot    prove    the    reality    of    any   space 


WEAL/SM  IN  RELATION  TO  MATHEMATICS     163 

whatever,  or  of  anything  else.  It  seems  ad- 
visable, however,  to  deal  more  directly  with 
the  question.  The  discussion  will  necessarily 
be  brief,  but  I  shall  try  to  indicate  the  main 
points.  Let  me  repeat  that  I  do  not  for  a 
moment  deny  the  value  of  imaginary  geome- 
try as  a  system  of  mathematical  symbols.  I 
should  as  soon  think  of  denying  the  value 
of  the  Cartesian  co-ordinates.  What  I  deny 
is  the  pJiilosopJiical  doctrine  based  upon  the 
symbolic  constructions  of  mathematics,  —  the 
doctrine  that  a  space  of  four  or  more  dimen- 
sions is  a  possible  reality.  I  must  also  warn 
the  reader  that  I  cannot  deal  with  the  mutu- 
ally discrepant  philosophical  views  of  those 
who  argue  for  the  phenomenality  of  our  space 
of  three  dimensions.  I  shall  further  limit  my- 
self mainly  to  Riemann  and  Helmholtz.  I  may 
mention,  however,  that  I  find  the  conclusions 
which  I  reached  several  years  ago  endorsed 
by  such  eminent  logicians  as  Sigwart  and 
Wundt,  not  to  speak  of  Lotze. 

(i)  I  find  Riemann,  then,  arguing  in  this 
way :  Space  is  a  logical  species  of  which  the 
logical  genus  is  extended    magnitude  or  mul- 


1 64  THE  CHRTSTIAIV  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

tiplicity  {Maimigfaltigkeit) ;  hence,  though  our 
space  is  the  only  one  of  which  we  have  actual 
experience,  it  is  not  the  only  possible  space. 
If  it  is  objected  that  Riemann  is  "antiquated," 
let  me  cite  Bruno  Erdmann.  I  have  not  read 
Erdmann  s  treatise,  having  ceased  to  take  any 
interest  in  the  question  after  my  study  of 
Riemann  and  Helmholtz,  but  I  quote  the  state- 
ment of  his  view  from  Wundt's  Logik  (I.  440). 
His  view  is,  then,  that  "  modern  geometry  has 
been  able  to  find  a  more  general  conception, 
under  which  space  may  be  subsumed  as  a 
particular  species,  and  from  which  therefore 
by  the  introduction  of  determinate  conditions 
the  fundamental  properties  of  space  may  be 
developed  analytically."  Now  I  have  no  hesi- 
tation in  saying  that  this  supposed  sub- 
sumption  of  space  under  a  logical  genus  is  a 
blunder,  which  the  best  modern  lo2:icians  have 
clearly  exposed.  The  whole  idea  of  determin- 
ing the  real  relations  of  things  by  the  forma- 
tion of  an  ascending  series  of  abstractions 
is  utterly  untenable,  resting  as  it  does  upon 
the  mediaeval  idea  of  logic  as  a  purely  formal 
science.     The   real  world  as   it  exists  for  our 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION-  TO  MATHEMATICS     165 

conceptual  thought  is  not  obtained  by  abstrac- 
tion from  full-formed  individuals  given  in  per- 
ception, but  by  a  concrete  process  in  which 
the  first  immediate  judgments  of  perception 
are  transformed  by  the  comprehension  of  the 
fundamental  relations,  implied  in  those  judg- 
ments, and  brought  to  light  in  the  complex 
process  in  which  knowledge  is  developed.  To 
run  up  and  down  a  logical  "  Porphyry's  tree  " 
is  a  travesty  of  the  process  of  thought,  which 
corresponds  to  nothing  "in  heaven  above,  or 
the  earth  beneath,  or  the  waters  under  the 
earth."  But,  even  if  we  grant  that  the  subsump- 
tion  of  logical  species  under  a  genus  is  a  valid 
process,  it  would  not  prove  that  our  space  is 
only  one  of  several  possible  species  of  space. 
For  the  whole  account  of  the  formation  of  losfi- 
cal  species  rests  upon  the  presupposition  that 
the  ultimate  datum  from  which  we  start  is  the 
individual.  Now  the  individual  in  this  case 
is  our  three-dimensional  space,  and  hence  we 
cannot  reason  from  the  general  conception  of 
extended  magnitude  to  the  possible  reality  of 
several  species  of  space.  We  can  get  nothing 
out  of   the  conception  of  extended  magnitude 


1 66  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

but  what  we  have  put  into  it ;  hence,  when  we 
descend  the  logical  tree  which  we  have  pre- 
viously ascended,  we  shall  find  at  the  end  just 
what  we  had  at  the  beginning,  and  what  we 
had  at  the  beginning  was  an  individual  space, 
of  three  dimensions.  Riemann  so  far  admits 
this  as  to  say  that  our  space  of  three  dimen- 
sions rests  upon  "  experience,"  but  he  still 
supposes  that  conception  is  wider  than  "  ex- 
perience," and  hence  that  there  is  nothing  to 
hinder  us  from  supposing  a  space  of  four  or 
more  dimensions.  There  is,  of  course,  noth- 
ing to  hinder  us  from  thinking  of  a  space  of 
four  or  more  dimensions,  but  the  possible 
reality  of  such  a  space  cannot  be  deduced 
from  the  abstract  conception  of  extended  mag- 
nitude. That  conception  is  limited  by  what 
is  already  contained  under  it,  and  there  is 
only  one  space  contained  under  it,  not  several 
species  of  space.  I  hold,  then,  that  in  rea- 
soning from  logical  genus  to  logical  species, 
Riemann  has  fallen  into  the  loG^ical  mistake  of 
supposing  that  possible  reality  can  be  deter- 
mined by  logical  possibility.  In  support  of 
what  I  have  said  let  me  quote  a  few  sentences 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO  MATHEMATICS     167 

from  Wundt.  Referring  to  Erdmann,  he  says: 
"  This  view  must  at  least  be  so  far  corrected, 
that  the  question  cannot  be  in  regard  to  a 
relation  of  genus  and  species  in  the  ordinary 
logical  sense.  If  a  genus  is  to  be  formed, 
several  species  must  be  given  which  possess 
certain  common  marks.  But  in  this  case  only 
one  space  is  given  to  our  perception."  And 
then  he  goes  on  to  point  out  that  "  we  can 
never  possess  an  actual  image  of  spaces  differ- 
ent from  ours."  "  An  opposite  view,"  he  con- 
tinues, "  seems  to  be  maintained  by  some 
mathematicians,  who  hold  that  we  can  make  a 
sensible  picture  of  spaces  of  another  kind,  as 
e.g.  a  space  which  consists  merely  of  a  plane 
or  of  a  spherical  or  pseudo-spherical  surface."* 
This  brings  us  to  what  I  regard  as  another 
fallacy  of  those  who  maintain  the  possible 
reality  of  a  space  other  than  ours. 

(2)  Helmholtz  seeks  to  commend  his  view 
that  a  space  other  than  ours  can  not  only  be 
thought  but  presented  to  the  imagination,  by 
the  fiction  of  beings  living  in  a  plane,  or 
a  sphere,  and  limited  in  their  consciousness  to 

*  Wundt's  Lo^ik  :  I.  440-1. 


1 68  THE  CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL   OF  UFE 

the  plane  or  the  sphere.  The  whole  supposi- 
tion seems  to  me  absurd  and  self-contradictory. 
There  is  no  difficulty  whatever  in  thinking  of 
beings  limited  to  a  plane  or  sphere;  for  such 
beings  are  to  all  intents  and  purposes  identical 
with  the  plane  or  sphere ;  but  what  we  cannot 
do  is  to  think  of  their  consciousness  as  super- 
ficial or  spherical.  A  superficial  or  spherical 
consciousness  has  no  meaning  whatever  that  I 
can  discover.  Now,  if  our  supposititious  beings 
have  not  a  superficial  or  spherical  conscious- 
ness, we  must  suppose  that  the  plane  or  the 
sphere  is  an  object  which  they  can  think  and 
reason  about.  But,  if  they  have  before  their 
consciousness  only  a  plane  or  a  sphere,  they 
wall  not  have  any  geometry  such  as  we  pos- 
sess, because  a  plane  is  the  boundary  of  a 
solid,  and  a  curve  is  relative  to  a  tangent. 
Such  beings  would  therefore  have  no  geome- 
try whatever.  This  seems  obvious  if  we 
carry  out  Helmholtz's  suggestion,  and  suppose 
beings  limited  to  -^  point.  Will  any  one  affirm 
that  a  point  has  any  meaning  except  as  the 
boundary  of  a  line  }  In  short,  a  plane  or  sphere 
is  intelligible  only  because  it  is  a  figure  in  our 


JDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO  MATHEMATICS     169 

three-dimensional  space.  To  reason  from  the 
curvature  of  a  plane  or  sphere  to  the  curvature 
of  space  seems  to  me  a  palpable  fallacy.  Space 
has  no  curvature,  though  figures  in  space  have. 
Let  me  again  support  my  view  by  a  quotation 
from  Wundt.  "  When  we  deal  with  the  geome- 
try of  the  plane,"  says  Wundt,  "our  spatial  idea 
is  no  other  than  in  the  geometry  of  space;  we 
merely  leave  out  of  consideration  all  spatial 
relations  except  the  plane ;  we  do  the  same 
in  the  investigation  of  the  geometrical  proper- 
ties of  spherical  or  pseudo-spherical  surfaces. 
Those  relations  of  space  from  which  we  thus 
abstract  have  no  existence  apart  from  our 
idea;  on  the  contrary,  we  require  our  com- 
plete space-perception,  not  only  for  the  idea 
of  a  curved  surface,  but  even  for  the  idea  of 
a  surface  or  a  line,  for  we  can  no  more  im- 
agine the  surface  than  the  line  except  as  in 
space :  we  imagine  both  not  as  independent 
spaces,  but  as  figures  in  space."  * 

(3)  It  is  supposed  that  because  functions  of 
magnitude  can  be  converted  into  geometrical 
relations  of   a  thinkable  space,  there   may  be 

*  Ibid.  I.  441. 


I/O  THE  CHRISTIAN'  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

beings  who  enjoy  the  consciousness  of  a  space 
of  11  dimensions.  Surely  this  is  an  untenable 
inference.  We  can  think  of  systems  in  which 
four,  five,  or  any  number  of  elements  are  re- 
quired, instead  of  the  three  elements  which 
space  demands  for  the  determination  of  the 
position  of  a  point.  But,  in  order  to  give  a 
geometrical  meaning  to  analytical  operations, 
we  have  to  refer  to  our  space  of  three  dimen- 
sions. "It  is  self-evident,"  says  Wundt,  "  that 
mathematical  speculations,  which  infer  that  our 
space  must  be  related  to  a  four-dimensional 
magnitude  in  the  same  way  as  the  surface  is 
related  to  our  space,  cannot  of  themselves  be 
the  basis  for  the  imaginability  of  a  space  of 
four  or  more  dimensions.  This  question 
stands  upon  precisely  the  same  level  as  that 
with  which  the  older  ontology  occupied  itself, 
viz.  whether  the  actual  world  is  or  is  not  the 
best  of  all  possible  worlds."*  I  will  conclude 
with  a  passage  from  Sigwart.  "  The  result  of 
these  enquiries,"  says  Sigwart,  "  is  not  that  it 
is  left  to  experience  to  decide  whether  we 
are  to  assume  the  plane  space  of  Euclid,  or  a 

*  Ibid.  I.  443- 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO   THE  SCIENCES     \y\ 

space  which  is  in  some  way  curved  ;  but  only 
that  from  the  purely  logical  standpoint  of 
analysis  the  quantitative  relations  of  space 
are  not  to  be  derived  as  the  necessary  form 
of  a  manifold  which  varies  in  three  directions, 
but  that  on  the  contrary  they  are  actual,  be- 
cause based  upon  an  unanalysable  necessity  of 
our  space-perception,  which  is  essentially  dif- 
ferent from  any  law  which  can  be  expressed 
in  numbers  and  numerical  relations.  They 
open  up  no  possibility  of  extending  our  space- 
perception,  or  of  representing  a  non-Euclidian 
geometry  not  merely  in  analytical  formulae, 
but  also  for  actual  perception;  we  remain  sub- 
ject to  those  laws  of  space  according  to  which 
we  first  think  of  it,  and  it  is  as  certain  that 
Euclid  will  remain  unrefuted  in  geometry,  as 
it  is  that  Aristotle  in  his  principle  of  contradic- 
tion has  outlived  the  Hegelian  logic."  " 


III.     THE    PHYSICAL    SCIENCES 

I    conclude,  then,  that   there   is   nothincr   in 
the  speculations  of  "  pangeometry  "  to  support 

*  Sigwart's  Logic.     English  tr.,  II.  566. 


172  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

the  view  of  phenomenalists  either  that  our 
consciousness  has  certain  forms  of  perception 
peculiar  to  itself,  as  Hehiiholtz  maintains,  or 
as  others  hold  that  there  may  be  an  external 
world  which  lies  in  a  space  of  four  or  more 
dimensions.  To  set  forth  all  the  objections 
which  beset  these  views  would  be  to  write  a 
whole  system  of  philosophy,  but  I  hope  I 
have  at  least  succeeded  in  indicating  some 
of  them.  The  world  of  the  mathematician  is, 
however,  very  far  from  being  reality  in  its 
completeness;  it  exists  only  as  the  construc- 
tion of  the  mathematician,  though  that  con- 
struction rests  upon  unchangeable  relations 
or  conditions  of  the  one  reality  which  alone 
exists.  Hence,  when  we  pass  to  the  physical 
sciences  we  have  made  a  considerable  advance 
in  the  determination  of  those  relations  or  con- 
ditions. There  are,  however,  two  fundamen- 
tal mistakes  which  we  must  here  seek  to 
avoid:  the  mistake  of  supposing  that  science 
merely  "  describes  "  the  world  of  sensible  per- 
ception, as  Kirchhoff  seems  to  say,  and  the 
mistake  of  imagining  that  the  laws  of  science 
are  more  than  an  abstract  or  partial  determi- 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION-  TO   THE  SCIENCES     173 

nation  of  reality.  The  theory  of  knowledge 
which  many  scientific  men  advance,  when  they 
leave  their  proper  task  and  assume  the  role 
of  the  logician,  is  usually  a  curious  mixture 
of  these  opposite  errors. 

Our  first  view  of  the  world  naturally  is  that 
things  lie  before  us  in  perception,  and  that, 
in  order  to  know  them,  we  must  take  them  as 
they  present  themselves,  carefully  excluding 
all  preconceptions,  and  accurately  observing 
their  qualities  and  determining  the  quantity 
of  each  quality.  Without  observation  of  this 
kind  there  can  be  no  science  of  nature,  but 
it  can  hardly  be  said  yet  to  be  science ;  or, 
at  least,  it  can  be  called  science  only  when 
the  observer  is  guided  in  his  selection  of 
facts  by  ideas  of  relation.  What  underlies 
scientific  observation  is  a  faith  in  the  pres- 
ence in  nature  of  conditions  or  relations 
which  remain  permanent  under  all  the 
changes  of  particulars.  It  must  be  observed, 
therefore,  that  science  transforms  the  ordi- 
nary view  of  the  world  by  penetrating  to 
those  permanent  conditions  or  relations  which 
are   not   obvious    to    perception,   but   are   only 


174  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

brought  to  light  by  the  persistent  endeavour 
to  find  the  identical  in  the  different.  The 
reality  which  science  discovers  is  in  one  way 
an  ideal  world,  a  world  which  exists  only  as 
a  construction  of  the  scientific  intellect,  but 
it  is  at  the  same  time  a  much  truer  appre- 
hension of  reality  than  that  ordinary  view 
of  things  from  which  science  is  developed, 
though  it  may  be  said  that  the  ordinary  view 
contains  implicitly  more  than  science  does 
justice  to.  Thus  the  physicist  and  chemist 
virtually  set  aside  all  the  sensible  relations 
of  things,  —  not  because  these  fall  outside  of 
the  real  world,  but  because  they  do  not 
come  within  the  scope  of  their  science,  — 
leaving  them  to  be  dealt  with  by  the  more 
concrete  sciences  of  physiology  and  psy- 
chology. If,  therefore,  we  fail  to  observe  the 
transformation  which  science  effects  in  our 
ordinary  view  of  the  world,  we  shall  fall  into 
the  mistake  of  supposing  that  it  is  merely  a 
"  description "  of  sensible  objects,  and  if  we 
insist  upon  the  reality  of  the  abstract  world 
of  relations  upon  which  science,  for  its  own 
purposes,  concentrates  attention,  we  shall  fall 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO  THE  SCIENCES     175 


into  the  opposite  mistake  of  hypostatising 
this  abstract  world,  and  identifying  it  with 
the  real  world  in  its  completeness.  These 
two  defects  are  closely  related  to  each  other; 
for  it  is  just  because  we  overlook  the  partial 
or  abstract  character  of  the  laws  of  science 
that  we  convert  relations  into  vague  and 
shadowy  things ;  and  it  is  because  we  do  not 
see  that  science  adopts  a  negative  attitude 
towards  immediate  perception  that  we  suppose 
it  to  leave  sensible  reality  as  it  was  before  sci- 
entific insight  has  broken  it  up,  and  are  led 
to  regard  laws  of  nature  as  a  refined  tran- 
script of  the  sensible,  instead  of  being,  what 
they  are,  a  purely  conceptual  world  of  fixed 
conditions  and  relations,  implied  no  doubt  in 
the  world  of  ordinary  observation,  but  not 
brought  into  clear  consciousness  and  made 
an  object  of  direct  consideration.  Thus 
Comte  tells  us  that  science  confines  itself  to 
the  investigation  of  the  laws  of  the  resem- 
blance, coexistence,  and  succession  of  phe- 
nomena, and  he  assumes  that  these  laws  are 
simply  the  generalised  restatement  or  descrip- 
tion   of    the    phenomena    themselves.     But    a 


176  THE  CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

law  is  something  more  than  a  generahsed  re- 
statement or  description  of  phenomena,  if  by 
"  phenomena  "  we  mean  the  objects  of  ordinary 
observation.  For  a  law  is  contrasted  with 
phenomena  as  the  permanent  relation  in  the 
changing  particular,  as  that  which  is  identical 
in  spite  of  all  differences,  as  the  principle  by 
reference  to  which  particulars  are  seen  to  be 
more  than  mere  phenomena  or  transitory 
phases  of  reality.  Were  it  not  possible  to 
penetrate  to  such  permanent,  identical,  or 
unchanging  relations,  we  should  have  no 
science  of  nature.  It  is  nothing  to  the 
point  that  no  law  is  final,  for  the  develop- 
ment of  science,  like  all  other  developments, 
consists  in  an  ever  fuller  comprehension  of 
fixed  relations,  or  what  are  usually  called 
"  uniformities,"  a  development  which  does  not 
simply  set  aside  the  relations  already  discov- 
ered, but  combines  them  in  a  higher  syn- 
thesis ;  indeed,  if  this  were  not  the  case, 
science  would  at  every  fresh  advance  throw 
down  all  that  it  had  laboriously  built  up 
and  start  de  novo. 

Now,  if  we  keep  in  mind  these  two  aspects 


FDEAUSM  IN  RELATION  TO  THE  SCIENCES     177 

of  a  scientific  law,  —  that  it  is,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  revelation  of  a  principle  which  is  estab- 
lished only  by  a  necessary  but  in  a  sense  an 
artificial  simplification  of  reality,  and  that  this 
principle  is,  after  all,  only  a  permanent  rela- 
tion of  the  changing,  —  we  shall,  I  think,  be 
led  to  see  that  a  law  of  nature,  as  it  is  not  a 
"  description "  of  phenomena,  so  it  is  not  a 
description  of  "uniformities."  A  "uniformity," 
if  we  are  to  give  the  word  anything  like  its 
ordinary  meaning,  is  naturally  regarded  as  a 
customary  or  frequent  repetition  of  a  given 
resemblance,  sequence,  or  coexistence ;  and  it 
is  in  this  sense  that  Mill  and  many  scientific 
men  who  make  an  incursion  into  the  field  of 
logic  are  disposed  to  interpret  a  law.  It  was 
in  contrast  to  this  doctrine  that  I  ventured  to 
challenge  Mill's  view  of  induction  as  based 
upon  "resemblance,"  instead  of  "  identity."  "^ 
The  "identity,"  of  course,  as  any  one  who 
reads  what  I  have  said  with  ordinary  care  will 
see,  is  not  that  of  a  changeless  "  substance  "  or 
"thing,"  —  I  do  not  admit  the  reality  of  such 
fictions   at   all,  —  but   of    a    relation.      No  two 

*  ComtCy  Milly  and  Spencer^  pp.  92-3. 
N 


1/8  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

individuals  are  alike ;  but  in  all  their  differ- 
ences they  may  agree  in  a  certain  feature,  and 
this  agreement  is  the  basis  of  Induction. 

Now,  when  we  ask  what  bearing  this  view 
of  a  law  of  nature  has  upon  the  question  of 
the  relativity  of  knowledge,  it  is  no  answer  to 
say  that  science  is  entirely  neutral.  In  one 
way  that  is  a  bare  tautology.  Science  as  such 
is  not  a  theory  of  knowledge ;  and,  of  course, 
having  no  theory  of  knowledge,  it  does  not  tell 
us  what  the  ultimate  nature  of  reality  is ;  but 
the  question  is  whether  the  view  of  reality, 
which  in  the  pursuit  of  his  special  object  the 
scientific  man  naturally  adopts,  can  be  re- 
garded as  ultimate.  The  attempt  to  answer 
this  question  leads  us  into  the  region  of  phi- 
losophy, and  compels  us  to  ask  what  is  the 
general  view  of  reality  upon  which  science  is 
based ;  and  the  answer,  as  we  may  be  certain, 
cannot  fail  to  be  coloured  by  the  general  the- 
ory of  knowledge  which  commends  itself  to 
those  who  seek  to  answer  the  question.  A 
phenomenalist  theory  of  knowledge  will  find 
support  in  science  for  its  doctrine,  because  it 
will  inteqDrct  scientific  conclusions  from   that 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO   THE  SCIENCES     179 

point  of  view,  and  so  in  other  cases.  I  have 
tried  to  explain  why  I  cannot  accept  the  phe- 
nomenalist  interpretation.  I  cannot  accept  it, 
because,  as  it  seems  to  me,  it  does  not  do  jus- 
tice to  the  real  advance  beyond  ordinary  obser- 
vation which  science  makes,  and  because  it 
does  not  take  due  note  of  the  abstract  or  par- 
tial character  of  the  scientific  view  of  reality. 
On  this  last  point  I  should  like  to  say  a  word 
or  two. 

We  are  too  apt  to  talk  glibly  of  "  laws  of 
nature  "  or  "  uniformities  of  nature,"  not  seeing 
that  two  discrepant  views  of  reality  are  con- 
cealed beneath  this  ambiguous  phraseology. 
Is  "  nature  "  simply  a  term  for  an  aggregate  of 
phenomena?  or  is  it  a  real  unity  or  organic 
system }  Mill  tells  us  that  we  cannot  properly 
speak  of  the  "uniformity"  of  nature,  but  only 
of  "  uniformities"  of  nature.  Now,  waiving  the 
objection  I  have  already  made  that  science 
deals  with  identities  and  not  with  uniformities, 
and  interpreting  the  term  "  uniformity  "  in  its 
higher  sense,  it  is  obvious  that  to  deny  any 
identity  or  unity  in  nature  is  to  deny  that 
reality  is  an  organic  system.     But  this  is  the 


l80  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

same  as  sa3dng  that  all  we  can  know  of  reality 
is  that  in  point  of  fact  we  find  certain  relations 
which,  so  far  as  our  experience  goes,  have  not 
changed,  but  which,  for  aught  we  can  show, 
might  change  at  an}^  moment.  Thus,  under 
the  denial  of  the  uniformity  or  unity  of  nature. 
Mill  and  others  assume  the  phenomenalist 
view  of  knowable  reality ;  and  when  they  are 
asked  to  substantiate  their  assumption,  they 
fall  back  upon  a  sensationalist  theory  of 
knowledge,  and  a  metaphysical  theory  of  the 
absolute  limitation  of  our  knowledge  to  phe- 
nomena. To  one  who  rejects  the  sensation- 
alist epistemology  and  is  convinced  of  the 
self-contradictory  character  of  the  phenome- 
nalist metaphysic,  the  denial  of  the  systematic 
unity  of  the  real  seems  a  denial  of  all  know- 
ledge and  of  all  reality.  I  content  myself  with 
pointing  out  this  result  of  the  ordinary  view 
of  laws  of  nature  as  implying  nothing  but 
observed  uniformities,  having  already  dwelt 
sufficiently  upon  what  I  regard  as  the  defects 
of  sensationalism  and  phenomenalism.  To  me 
it  seems  to  be  one  of  the  gifts  which  a  true 
philosophy    conveys,    to    bring    to    light    that 


IDEALISM  IN-  RELATION  TO   BIOLOGY      i8l 

organic  unity  of  nature  which  is  implicit  in 
science.  For  "  nature  "  has  no  meaning  apart 
from  a  unifying  inteUigence,  and  to  deny  the 
unity  of  nature  is  to  deny  the  unity  of  intelli- 
gence and  to  make  all  knowledge  impossible. 
I  admit,  however,  or  rather  contend,  that  the 
organic  unity  of  reality  lies  beyond  the  horizon 
of  the  specialist  in  physics,  and  even  in  chem- 
istry ;  but  the  biologist,  from  the  character  of 
the  objects  with  which  he  deals,  is  almost  inva- 
riably more  readily  disposed  to  hold  that  the 
real  world  is  an  organic  unity.  In  proof  of 
this  it  is  enough  to  refer  to  Darwin  himself, 
whose  whole  doctrine  is  inspired  by  the  idea 
of  such  a  unity,  though  he  fails  to  give  a 
philosophical  formulation  of  it;  and  to  the 
recent  developments  of  biology,  which  have 
been  more  and  more  in  this  direction. 


IV.     BIOLOGY 

The  doctrine  of  natural  selection,  while  it 
compels  us  to  abandon  the  external  or  me- 
chanical idea  of  teleology  associated  with  the 
name     of    Paley,   is    incompetent    to    explain 


1 82  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OE  LIEE 

knowledge  or  morality.  To  this  view  it  has 
been  objected  that  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
as  held  by  Darwin  and  many  of  his  followers, 
cannot  be  identified  with  the  doctrine  of 
natural  selection,  and  that  I  have  therefore 
confused  true  Darwinism  with  the  views  of 
Wallace  and  Weissmann.  This  objection 
does  not  seem  to  me  to  affect  in  any  way 
the  point  which  I  sought  to  establish.  My 
aim  was  to  show  that,  without  assuming  any- 
thing but  what  is  admitted  by  all  biologists, 
a  certain  philosophical  conclusion,  not  con- 
templated or  even  denied  by  certain  biolo- 
gists, must  yet  be  reached.  That  conclusion 
was  that  an  immanent  teleology  may  be  legiti- 
mately deduced  from  the  doctrine  of  natural 
selection.  It  was  not  necessary  for  my  pur- 
pose to  embroil  myself  in  the  questions  at 
issue  between  Wallace,  Weissmann,  and  others, 
while  by  doing  so  I  should  have  given  occa- 
sion for  the  retort  that  teleology  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  biological  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tionary descent.  That  this  is  no  fanciful  dan- 
ger may  be  shown  by  a  single  extract  from 
Huxley's    account    of    the    reception    of    the 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATIOIV  TO   BIOLOGY      183 

Origin  of  Species  in  Darwin's  Life  and 
Letters.  "  Having  got  rid,"  says  Huxley,  "  of 
the  belief  in  chance  and  the  disbelief  in  de- 
sign, as  in  no  sense  appurtenances  of  evolution^ 
the  third  libel  upon  that  doctrine,  that  it  is 
anti-theistic,  might  perhaps  be  left  to  shift  for 
itself.  .  .  .  The  doctrine  of  evolution  does 
not  even  come  into  contact  with  theism,  con- 
sidered as  a  philosophical  doctrine."  *  To 
this  view  I  entirely  assent ;  but,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  we  may,  accepting  the  scientific  doctrine 
of  evolutionary  descent,  go  on  to  base  upon  it 
a  philosophical  argument  in  favour  of  a  teleo- 
logical  view  of  the  world.  It  may  be  said, 
however,  that  it  is  illegitimate  to  speak  of 
Darwinism  as  synonymous  with  the  doctrine 
of  natural  selection.  And  no  doubt  it  is 
true  that,  in  the  wider  sense  of  the  term,  the 
biological  doctrine  of  evolution,  as  held  by 
Darwin,  admitted  other  factors  than  natural 
selection;  but  it  will  be  admitted  that  the 
great  achievement  of  Darwin  was  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  old  rigid  separation  of  species  by 
the  theory  of  natural  selection.     This  was  all 

*  Darwin's  Life  and  Letters  :   Am.  ed.,  I.  555-6. 


1 84  THE  CHRISTIAN-  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

that  I  contended,  and  all  that  my  argument 
required  me  to  deal  with.  In  taking  this 
view  I  might  have  supported  myself  by  the 
authority  of  Huxley.  In  the  essay  already 
quoted,  that  eminent  biologist  says :  "  The 
suggestion  that  new  species  may  result  from 
the  selective  action  of  external  conditions 
upon  the  variations  from  their  specific  type 
which  individuals  present  ...  is  the  central 
idea  of  the  Origin  of  Species  and  contains 
the  quintessence  of  Darwinismr  ^  And  again, 
a  few  pages  further  on:  "Whatever  may  be 
the  ultimate  fate  of  the  particular  theory  put 
forth  by  Darwin  [the  "particular  theory,"  as 
the  context  shows,  being  natural  selection],  I 
venture  to  affirm  that,  so  far  as  my  know- 
ledge goes,  all  the  ingenuity  and  all  the  learn- 
ingr  of  hostile  critics  has  not  enabled  them 
to  adduce  a  solitary  fact,  of  which  it  can  be 
said  this  is  irreconcilable  with  the  Darwinian 
theory."  t  Here  Huxley  tells  us  that  natural 
selection  is  "  the  quijitessence  of  Darwinism," 
and  that  opponents  have  not  adduced  "  a  soli- 
tary fact,  of  which  it  can  be  said  this  is  irrecon- 

*  Ibid.  I.  548-9.  t  Ibid.  I.  552. 


rDEALISM  TN  RELATION  TO   BIOLOGY      185 

cilable  with  the  Darwinian  theory,"  meaning 
the  theory  of  natural  selection.  Surely  what 
Huxley  here  means  is  that  what  was  dis- 
tinctive of  Darwin  was  the  doctrine  of  natural 
selection.  It  seems  unnecessary  to  dwell  fur- 
ther upon  this  point,  but  it  may  be  worth 
while,  for  other  reasons,  to  cite  a  few  of 
Darwin's  own  expressions.  To  begin  with, 
what  did  Darwin  call  his  first  great  book } 
He  called  it  The  Origin  of  Species  by  Means 
of  Natural  Selection.  In  the  autobiography 
he  says :  "  The  old  argument  from  design 
in  nature,  as  given  by  Paley,  which  formerly 
seemed  to  me  so  conclusive,  fails,  noiv  that 
the  law  of  natural  selection  has  been  discovered. 
.  .  .  There  seems  to  be  no  more  design 
in  the  variability  of  organic  beings,  and  in 
the  action  of  natural  selection,  than  in  the 
course  which  the  wind  blows."  ^  This  pas- 
sage leaves  no  doubt  whatever  that  in  Dar- 
win's own  mind  his  theory  was  incompatible 
with  teleology.  On  another  occasion  Dar- 
win writes :  "  It  is  not  that  desio:ned  varia- 
tion  makes,  as  it  seems  to  me,  my  deity 
*  Ibid.  1. 278-9. 


1 86  THE  CHRIST/ AN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

'natural  selection'  superfluous,  but  from  seeing 
what  an  enormous  field  of  undesigned  varia- 
bility there  is  ready  for  natural  selection  to 
appropriate."  Now  I  have  no  desire  to  nar- 
row Darwin's  theory  more  than  he  narrowed 
it  himself.  I  know  that  Darwin,  with  his  large 
candour  and  what  may  be  called  his  uncon- 
scious idealism,  follows  the  facts  wherever  they 
lead  him,  and  suggests  modifications  of  his 
doctrine  which,  as  he  says  on  one  occasion, 
"  lessen  the  glory  of  natural  selection  " ;  but  I 
think  no  one  can  deny  that  he  always  and 
consistently  rejected  teleology,  and  rejected  it 
mainly  "  now  that  the  law  of  natural  selection 
has  been  discovered."  Now,  my  argument 
was,  rightly  or  wrongly,  that  the  law  of  natural 
selection  itself,  when  we  see  all  its  philosophi- 
cal—  not  its  scientific  —  implications,  compels 
us  to  affirm  an  immanent  teleology,  and  that 
it  is  from  not  taking  note  of  these  implications 
that  Darwin  himself  and  many  of  his  followers 
suppose  that  knowledge  and  morality  may  be 
explained  by  the  method  of  science.  It  there- 
fore seems  to  me  that  science  does  not  estab- 
lish teleology,  but  that  a  comprehensive  view 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO   BIOLOGY      187 

of  living  beings,  and  much  more  of  man,  does 
establish  teleology.  But,  after  all,  it  is  mainly 
a  question  of  definition  whether  we  call  a 
theory  scientific  or  philosophical ;  and  I  am 
quite  contented  to  rest  my  case  on  the  broad 
view  that  Darwin  and  many  of  his  followers 
are  wrong  in  denying  teleology,  though  they 
are  perfectly  right  in  denying  that  mechanical 
form  of  teleology  which  is  associated  with  the 
name  of  Paley. 

It  is  important  to  observe  that  a  teleological 
view  of  the  world  does  not  exclude  but  pre- 
supposes the  law  of  natural  causation.  We 
must  therefore  be  careful  to  avoid  regarding 
"  purpose  "  as  a  sort  of  deus  ex  macJiina,  which 
is  to  be  invoked  when  the  ordinary  scientific 
explanation  has  not  yet  been  discovered.  Such 
a  conception  of  "  purpose  "  in  nature  seems  to 
me  a  survival  of  the  obsolete  idea  of  external 
teleology,  from  which  the  doctrine  of  develop- 
ment has  helped  to  free  us.  I  have  no  belief 
in  a  teleology  which  does  not  presuppose  the 
inviolability  of  the  natural  law  of  causation. 
If  a  break  could  be  found  in  that  law,  we 
should   have  to  fall   back   upon   the  idea  that 


1 88  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

there  is  no  system  of  nature,  but  merely  a  par- 
tial and  imperfect  arrangement  of  parts.  The 
teleology  which  is  here  maintained  is  based 
upon  the  recognition  of  a  fixed  order  in  nature. 
What  is  held  is,  that  living  beings  by  their 
very  nature  contain  in  them  a  principle  of 
unity  which  is  realised  within  the  inviolable 
system  of  natural  law. 

The  theory  of  natural  selection  assumes, 
firstly,  that  the  laws  of  nature  are  inviolable. 
This  is  at  bottom  another  way  of  saying  that, 
when  we  come  to  the  study  of  nature,  we  pre- 
suppose that  it  is  a  system  of  facts,  so  perfect 
that  there  is  no  break  or  flaw  in  it.  Hence 
living  beings,  as  well  as  inorganic  things,  are 
within  this  system,  and  there  can  be  no  such 
dissolution  of  continuity  as  that  which  is  sug- 
gested by  the  view  of  purpose  as  external  or 
mechanical.  Secondly,  natural  selection  as- 
sumes that  in  each  living  being  there  is  a 
tendency  or  impulse  to  maintain  itself  and  to 
continue  the  species.  In  saying  that  the  doc- 
trine of  natural  selection  rests  on  this  assump- 
tion, it  is  not  meant  that  the  biologist  need  be 
aware  of  it,  or  that  he  employs  it  in  his  specific 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO   BIOLOGY      189 

enquiries.  The  specialist  is  hardly  ever  aware 
of  the  preconceptions  from  which  he  starts. 
What  is  maintained  is,  that  reflection  upon 
the  theory  of  natural  selection  compels  us  to 
take  this  view.  It  has  been  said  that  the 
impulse  to  self-maintenance  is  "  something 
wholly  conditioned  upon  and  resident  within 
the  material  nature  of  the  organism."  What 
is  to  be  understood  by  the  "  material  nature  of 
the  organism  "  ?  Is  it  meant  that  the  craving 
for  food,  for  example,  can  be  attributed  to  "  the 
material  nature  of  the  organism  "  ?  If  so,  that 
impulse  must  be  capable  of  being  expressed  in 
terms  of  matter  and  motion.  This  seems  to 
me  a  mere  confusion  of  thought,  resting  upon 
a  physical  metaphor  which  conceals  the  char- 
acteristic fact  that  sensibility  does  not  belong 
to  the  "  material  nature  of  the  organism,"  but 
is  the  differentia  of  a  certain  class  of  living 
beings. 

Thirdly,  if  there  were  no  adaptation  what- 
ever between  organisms  and  their  environ- 
ment, it  would  be  impossible  for  them  to 
exist  at  all.  It  is  objected  that  there  is 
also    harmony   between    "  a    piece    of    ice    and 


IQO  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

the  water  in  which  it  floats."  No  doubt ;  but 
the  kind  of  harmony  to  which  I  refer,  as  is 
impHed  by  the  two  preceding  characteristics, 
is  one  which  exists  only  in  a  being  which 
is  internally  purposive,  and  that  cannot  be 
said  of  the  piece  of  ice.  It  is  no  doubt  true 
that  when  we  have  discovered  that  living 
beings  are  purposive,  we  can  no  longer  speak 
of  nature  as  if  it  were  merely  a  mechanical 
system ;  but,  as  Kant  points  out,  it  is  living 
beings  which  first  clearly  suggest  to  us  that 
nature  is  purposive.  And  if  it  is  true,  as  I 
have  maintained,  that  we  cannot  differentiate 
living  from  non-living  beings  without  apply- 
ing the  idea  of  purpose,  we  are  entitled  to 
say  that  reality  as  a  whole  must  be  inter- 
preted from  the  new  point  of  view  of  an 
immanent  teleology.  It  is  only  by  an  arti- 
ficial truncation  of  reality,  such  as  is  a  neces- 
sary device  in  the  pursuit  of  the  physical 
sciences,  that  we  are  led  to  suppose  that 
nature  is  merely  a  mechanical  system.  The 
peculiar  phenomena  of  living  beings  compel 
us  to  revise  our  first  inadequate  view,  and  to 
say  that    real   existence    is    not    merely  a  me- 


IDEALISM  IN  RELATION  TO  BIOLOGY      191 

chanical  but  a  teleological  system.  Having 
gone  so  far,  we  can  hardly  refuse  to  take 
the  last  step,  and  admit  that  the  existence 
of  self-conscious  beings  again  compels  us  to 
revise  our  view  of  reality,  and  to  admit  that 
the  only  completely  satisfactory  explanation 
of  it  is  that  which  refers  the  world  to  a  self- 
conscious,   rational,  and  spiritual  principle. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

IDEALISM    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

The  conclusion  to  which  we  have  been 
brought  is  that  the  ultimate  conception  by 
means  of  which  existence  must  be  explained 
is  that  of  a  self-conscious  and  self-determin- 
ing principle.  Now  it  is  important  to  see 
precisely  what  is  involved  in  this  conception, 
and  to  remove  from  it  all  elements  which 
are  inconsistent  with  its  purity  and  with  the 
position  assigned  to  it  as  the  only  adequate 
explanation  of  the  world  as  a  whole.  A 
thorough  discussion  of  this  topic  would  de- 
mand a  complete  system  of  metaphysic,  but 
it  may  be  possible  in  brief  compass  to  show 
the  inadequacy  of  certain  definitions  of  God 
or  the  absolute,  and  to  indicate  the  defini- 
tion which  it  would  be  the  task  of  a  com- 
pletely reasoned    system   to   establish.     When 

this  has  been  done,  an  attempt  will  be  made 

192 


IDEALISM  AND   CHRISTIANITY  193 

to  give  an  outline  of  the  relation  of  the 
world,  and  especially  of  man,  to  the  abso- 
lute. A  consideration  of  these  two  questions 
will  of  itself  be  sufficient  to  show  that  Ideal- 
ism is  in  essential  harmony  with  the  Chris- 
tian ideal  of  life,  as  held  by  the  Founder  of 
Christianity,  however  it  may  differ,  at  least 
in  form,  from  popular  Christian  theology. 

(i)  The  absolute  is  very  inadequately  con- 
ceived when  it  is  defined  simply  as  sub- 
stance. This  view  is  the  inevitable  result  of 
opposing  mind  and  nature,  or  thought  and 
reality,  to  each  other  as  abstract  opposites. 
For,  if  mind  excludes  nature  and  nature 
mind,  we  are  compelled  to  seek  for  the  unity 
of  both  in  that  which  is  neither,  but  is  some- 
thing beyond  both.  This  "something,"  how- 
ever, cannot  be  further  defined,  and  hence  it 
remains  for  knowledge  absolutely  indetermi- 
nate. Now  it  is  strangely  supposed  that  such 
an  elimination  of  the  distinction  of  nature 
and  mind  is  the  logical  result  of  the  idealis- 
tic  conception  of  the  absolute.  When  it  is 
maintained  that  there  can  be  no  abstract 
separation  of    mind    and    nature,  subject    and 


94 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 


object,  it  is  argued  that  mind  and  nature  are 
identified,  and  hence  it  is  said  that  we  must 
fall  back  upon  a  unity  which  is  manifested 
indifferently  in  both.  This  objection  seems 
to  me  to  rest  upon  a  misconception  of  what 
Idealism  affirms.  What  is  really  maintained 
is  that  the  conception  of  nature  as  an  inde- 
pendent reality  is  a  conception  which,  if 
taken  in  its  strict  sense,  contradicts  itself.  If 
nature  is  an  independent  reality,  it  can  have 
in  it  no  principle  of  unity.  For  the  highest 
principle  by  which  it  can  be  determined  is 
that  of  the  interdependence  of  its  parts,  and 
this  principle  still  leaves  the  parts  external 
to  one  another,  while  it  explains  the  process  of 
nature  as  the  changes  which  are  produced  in 
each  part  by  the  action  upon  it  of  the  others. 
But  such  a  conception  does  not  take  us  be- 
yond the  idea  of  an  aggregate  of  parts  only 
externally  or  mechanically  related  to  one 
another.  On  the  other  hand,  when  mind  is 
separated  from  nature,  it  can  only  be  con- 
ceived as  an  abstract  unity  which,  as  having 
no  differences  within  itself,  must  for  ever 
remain  in  its  abstractness.      Now  Idealism  re- 


IDEALISM  AND   CHRISTIANITY  195 

fuses  to  admit  that  nature  and  mind  are  thus 
separated.  It  regards  nature  as  the  manifes- 
tation of  mind,  and  mind  as  the  principle  of 
unity  implied  in  nature.  Hence,  for  the  me- 
chanical conception  of  nature  as  a  system  of 
interdependent  parts  undergoing  correspon- 
dent changes,  is  substituted  the  organic  idea 
of  nature  as  a  system  which  develops  towards 
an  end.  This  view  transforms  the  concep- 
tion of  nature,  not  by  denying  that  it  is  a 
system,  but  by  regarding  it  as  a  system 
which  is  rational,  and  therefore  is  intelligible 
to  all  beings  in  whom  reason  operates.  Now, 
if  we  have  to  interpret  nature  from  the  point 
of  view  of  reason,  the  key  to  nature  is  to  be 
found  in  mind.  Hence  the  absolute  cannot 
be  adequately  conceived  merely  as  the  unity 
which  is  beyond  the  distinction  of  nature 
and  mind,  but  only  as  the  unity  which  is 
implicit  in  nature  and  explicit  in  mind. 
When,  therefore,  we  seek  to  determine  the 
relation  of  particular  forms  of  being  to 
the  absolute,  the  question  is  how  far  each 
is  the  explicit  manifestation  of  rationality. 
No  form  of  reality  can  be  regarded  as  "  mere 


196  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

appearance,"  but  only  as  the  more  or  less 
adequate  manifestation  of  the  principle  which 
is  the  source  and  explanation  of  all  reality. 
When,  therefore,  we  speak  of  an  "individual" 
reality,  we  must  remember  that  its  individu- 
ality is  constituted  by  its  relation  to  the  whole. 
On  the  other  hand,  an  individual  reality  can- 
not be  defined  as  nothing  but  the  sum  of  its 
relations  to  other  individual  realities.  The 
conception  of  reality  as  determined  purely  by 
the  relations  of  one  thing  to  another  over- 
looks the  principle  of  unity  which  is  present 
in  all  alike.  This  is  true  even  of  inorganic 
things.  Each  atom  of  oxygen  or  hydrogen  is 
nothing  apart  from  its  relations,  but  each  par- 
ticipates in  the  universal,  so  that  an  atom  of 
each  is  always  determined  by  the  relations 
into  which  it  is  capable  of  entering,  while 
yet  it  manifests  the  character  peculiar  to  all 
atoms  of  its  own  kind.  The  individuality  in 
this  case  is  of  a  very  simple  character.  Much 
more  obvious  is  the  principle  of  individuality 
in  the  case  of  livino^  beinofs,  which  do  not 
persist  in  the  same  unchangeable  relations, 
but  exhibit  a  whole  series  of  relations  to  the 


IDEALISM  AND   CHRIST/AIV/TY  197 

environment.  Hence  we  can  only  describe 
the  nature  of  a  living  being  by  pointing  out 
the  cycle  of  changes  through  which  it  passes. 
The  living  being  is  thus  distinguished  from 
the  non-living  by  the  greater  complexity  of 
its  relations,  and  by  the  more  express  exhibi- 
tion of  its  individual  unity.  But  it  is  espe- 
cially in  self-conscious  beings  that  individuality 
and  universality  reach  their  higher  stage. 
Speaking  generally,  we  must  therefore  say 
that  a  being  is  more  truly  individual,  the  more 
perfectly  it  contains  within  itself  the  principle 
of  the  whole.  We  cannot  therefore  say  that 
the  absolute  is  manifested  equally  in  all  be- 
ings; indeed,  strictly  speaking,  it  is  only  in 
self-conscious  beings  that  the  true  nature  of 
the  absolute  is  revealed.  Now,  if  it  is  true 
that  only  as  reason  is  developed  in  a  being 
does  it  express  what  is  the  true  principle  of 
the  whole,  it  is  manifest  that  the  absolute 
cannot  be  realised,  as  it  truly  is,  in  beings 
lower  than  man,  and  that  even  in  man  it  is 
not  realised  in  its  absolute  completeness. 
By  this  conception  of  the  immanence  of  the 
absolute   in   all  forms  of  beinsf,  toQ^ether  with 


198  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

the  recognition  that  in  man  at  his  best  the 
absolute  is  most  fully  manifested,  we  are  en- 
abled to  see  that  the  conception  of  the  abso- 
lute as  merely  the  unchanging  substance 
which  persists  in  all  forms  of  changing 
existence  is  quite  inadequate.  Such  a  con- 
ception, on  the  one  hand,  abolishes  all  the 
distinctions  of  one  being  from  another,  mak- 
ing them  all  equally  unreal;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  denies  that  the  absolute  is  a  self- 
revealing  subject,  immanent  in  all  forms  of 
being,  but  manifested  truly  only  in  those  that 
are  self-conscious. 

(2)  The  absolute  is  inadequately  conceived 
when  it  is  defined  as  the  power  which  is 
manifested  in  all  particular  forms  of  reality, 
or,  in  other  words,  simply  as  the  first  cause 
or  creator  of  the  world.  The  conception  of 
power  or  force  is  that  of  a  negative  activity 
which  manifests  itself  in  overcoming  some 
other  power  which  is  opposed  to  it.  The 
mechanical  conception  of  energy  is  the  "  power 
of  doing  work,"  and  is  always  explained  as 
manifested  in  opposition  to  that  which  resists 
it.     All  energy  is  therefore  by  its  very  nature 


IDEALISM  AND   CHR/ST/AN/TV  199 

limited.  When,  therefore,  we  speak  of  infinite 
power,  we  virtually  transcend  the  conception 
of  energy,  for  "  infinite "  power  must  be  the 
energy  which  includes  in  itself  all  forms  of 
energy.  Such  a  conception  takes  us  beyond 
the  conception  of  power  altogether.  The 
only  kind  of  power  which  can  be  called  infi- 
nite is  that  power  which  is  self-determinant, 
and  such  a  power  is  found  only  in  self-con- 
scious energy,  which  is  truly  infinite  because 
it  returns  upon  itself  or  preserves  its  unity 
in  all  its  manifestations.  In  self-conscious 
energy,  object  and  subject  are  identical.  In 
man  this  energy  of  self-consciousness  is  not 
complete,  because  man  is  not  completely  self- 
conscious.  But  in  the  absolute  there  must 
be  complete  self-consciousness.  Now,  if  we 
are  compelled  to  conceive  of  the  absolute  as 
complete  self-consciousness,  there  is  in  the 
absolute  the  perfect  unity  of  subject  and  ob- 
ject. And  as  such  a  unity  admits  of  no 
degrees,  there  can  be  no  absolute  origination 
of  reality,  for  this  would  mean  the  absolute 
origination  of  some  phase  of  the  absolute. 
The   ordinary    conception    of   creation   as   the 


200  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

origination  of  the  world  out  of  nothing  con- 
veys a  truth  in  the  form  of  a  self-contradiction : 
it  expresses  the  idea  of  self-determining  activ- 
ity in  the  imaginative  form  of  a  transition  from 
nothing  to  reality  as  taking  place  in  time. 
A  blank  nothing  is  imagined,  which  is  at 
bottom  merely  the  abstraction  from  all  deter- 
minate reality,  and  then  it  is  imagined  that 
this  blank  nothing  is  succeeded  by  determi- 
nate reality.  The  conception  of  causality,  as 
it  is  employed  in  determining  the  relation  of 
one  phase  of  reality  to  another,  is  transferred 
to  the  relation  between  the  absolute  and  de- 
terminate reality.  Now,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
conception  of  causal  connexion  has  no  mean- 
ing except  as  expressing  the  dependence  of 
particular  phases  of  reality  upon  one  an- 
other, and  ultimately  we  are  compelled  to  rec- 
ognise that  such  interdependence  of  particular 
phases  of  reality  presupposes  a  self-determin- 
ing principle.  When  we  have  reached  this 
point  of  view,  we  have  transcended  the  cate- 
gory of  causality,  and  it  is  therefore  inadmis- 
sible to  employ  it  in  seeking  to  explain  the 
relation  of  the  parts  to  the   whole.      But  this 


IDEALISM  AND    CHRISTIANITY  20 1 

is  what  is  done  in  the  ordinary  conception 
of  creation,  thougli  the  inadequacy  of  the  con- 
ception is  virtually  admitted  when  the  creation 
of  the  world  is  figured  as  the  origination  of  it 
from  nothing.  For  "  nothing  "  is  represented 
as  if  it  were  a  material  to  which  a  definite 
form  was  given  by  the  action  upon  it  of  an 
external  cause.  It  is  obvious  that  this  crude 
way  of  conceiving  the  relation  of  the  world  to 
the  absolute  must  be  discarded.  The  world 
cannot  be  separated  from  the  absolute,  but 
must  be  regarded  as  the  manifestation  or  ob- 
jectification  of  the  absolute,  or,  in  other  words, 
as  the  absolute  itself  regarded  in  its  abstract 
opposition  to  itself.  This  opposition,  how- 
ever, is  merely  a  distinction ;  for  that  which  is 
opposed  to  the  absolute  is  the  absolute  itself. 
(3)  The  absolute  is  not  adequately  con- 
ceived as  a  person,  although  no  doubt  the 
conception  of  personality  is  much  more  ade- 
quate as  a  predicate  of  the  absolute  than  that 
of  power.  By  a  "  person  "  we  mean  a  being 
that  is  an  individual,  and,  further,  an  indi- 
vidual who  is  capable  of  conceiving  himself 
as  a  self.     But  personality  emphasises  the  ex- 


202  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

elusive  aspeet  of  self-aetivity,  and  thus  one 
person  is  separated  from  and  opposed  to 
another.  On  this  basis  of  exclusive  selfhood 
all  rights  are  based,  a  right  being  the  expres- 
sion of  the  self  in  that  which  has  no  self. 
Now,  so  far  as  the  absolute  is  afifirmed  to  be 
a  person,  the  main  idea  is  that  the  absolute 
is  self-conscious,  and  to  this  extent  it  is  true 
that  the  absolute  is  a  person.  But  the  abso- 
lute is  not  properly  conceived  as  a  person  in 
the  sense  of  being  an  exclusive  self-centred 
individual.  The  conception  of  personality  is 
inadequate  even  when  applied  to  man,  for  it 
is  not  true  that  man  is  merely  a  person.  The 
first  consciousness  of  exclusive  or  adverse  re- 
lations to  others  must  be  supplemented  by 
the  conception  of  man  as  essentially  spirit, 
that  is,  as  a  being  whose  true  self  is  found 
in  relation  to  what  is  not  self.  Man  is  there- 
fore not  adequately  conceived  as  an  exclusive 
self,  but  only  as  a  self  whose  true  nature  is  to 
transcend  his  exclusiveness  and  to  find  himself 
in  what  seems  at  first  to  be  opposed  to  him. 
In  other  words,  man  is  essentially  self-separa- 
tive :    he  must  go  out  of  his  apparently  self- 


IDEALISM  AND   CHRISTIANITY  203 

centred  life  in  order  to  find  himself  in  a  truer 
and  richer  life.  This  conception  of  a  self- 
opposing  subject  must  be  applied  to  the  ab- 
solute. The  absolute  is  not  an  abstract 
person,  but  a  spirit,  i.e.  a  being  whose  essen- 
tial nature  consists  in  opposing  to  itself  beings 
in  unity  with  whom  it  realises  itself.  This 
conception  of  a  self-alienating  or  self-distin- 
guishing subject  seems  to  me  the  fundamental 
idea  which  is  expressed  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity.  We  can  conceive  nothing  higher 
than  a  self-conscious  subject,  who,  in  the  in- 
finite fulness  of  his  nature,  exhibits  his  per- 
fection in  beings  who  realise  themselves  in 
identification  with  him.  What  Schiller  ex- 
presses in  a  figurative  way  seems  to  me  to 
be  the  necessary  result  of  philosophy:  — 

"  Freundlos  war  der  grosse  Weltenmeister, 
Fiihlte  Mangel,  darum  schuf  er  Geister, 

Sel'ge  Spiegel  seiner  Seligkeit. 
Fand  das  hochste  Wesen  schon  kein  Gleiches, 
Aus  dem  Kelch  des  ganzen  Wesenreiches 

Schaumt  ihm  die  Unendlichkeit." 

There    is    at    present    a    tendency  to   main- 
tain   that    the    absolute    must    be    defined    as 


204  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

somethins:  higher  than  a  self-conscious  sub- 
ject.  This  view  seems  to  me  to  rest  upon 
the  false  assumption  that  the  distinction  of 
subject  and  object  is  a  mark  of  limitation. 
But  it  can  only  be  a  mark  of  limitation  on 
the  supposition  that  the  object  is  in  some 
way  disparate  from  the  subject,  i.e.  contains 
an  element  which  is  incomprehensible.  The 
view  which  is  here  maintained  is  that,  in  the 
absolute,  subject  and  object  are  absolutely 
identical;  in  other  words,  that  the  subject  is 
its  own  object.  If  it  is  objected  that  in  that 
case  there  is  no  distinction  between  them, 
the  answer  is  that  as  the  subject  compre- 
hends all  reality,  there  is  in  the  absolute  no 
distinction  bchvccn  subject  and  object,  but 
there  is  an  infinity  of  distinctions  luithiii  the 
absolute.  The  absolute,  in  other  words,  is 
essentially  self-distinguishing. 

It  has  already  been  maintained  that  the 
world,  as  the  manifestation  of  God,  is  pur- 
posive. It  must  be  observed,  however,  that 
this  purpose  is  not  something  superadded  to 
the  world,  but  is  implied  in  its  very  nature. 
It  is  important  to  make  this   observation,  be- 


IDEALISM  AND   CHRlSTlAAriTV  20 5 

cause  the  whole  objection  to  the  teleological 
view  of  the  world  arises  from  confusing 
mechanical  with  immanent  teleology.  The 
idealistic  view  is  therefore  hostile  to  the  con- 
ception of  Providence  as  the  external  adapta- 
tion of  events  to  an  end.  Mr.  Balfour  tells 
us  that  one  cannot  "  think  of  evolution  in  a 
God-created  w^orld  without  attributing  to  its 
Author  the  notion  of  purpose  slowly  worked 
out."  *  It  is  of  course  obvious  that  the  con- 
ception of  God  implies  that  the  process  of 
evolution  is  towards  an  end ;  but  this  process 
cannot  be  adequately  described  as  a  "  prefer- 
ential exercise  of  divine  power."  We  cannot 
conceive  of  the  world  as  first  created,  and 
then  directed  towards  an  end.  The  reality 
of  the  world  implies  the  continuous  self- 
determination  of  God,  and  this  self-determi- 
nation involves  the  process  by  which  the 
world  is  maintained  as  an  oroanic  whole. 
We  cannot,  therefore,  separate  the  evolution 
of  the  world  from  its  existence.  If  we  do 
so,  we  fall  into  the  difficulty  urged  by  Kant 
against    the    argument    from    design,    that    we 

*  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  328. 


206  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

presuppose  a  "  matter "  to  which  the  divine 
Architect  gives  shape.  Such  a  "  matter "  is 
unthinkable.  The  nearest  approach  we  can 
make  to  it  is  in  some  such  conception  as  that 
of  the  primitive  matter  from  which,  according 
to  the  nebular  theory,  the  complex  forms  of 
our  solar  system  have  been  evolved.  But  in 
this  nebulous  matter  there  is  already  implied 
the  "  promise  and  potency "  of  all  forms  of 
life,  and  hence  it  can  only  be  called  "  matter " 
in  the  relative  sense  of  being  a  less  developed 
form  of  the  world  than  is  realised  in  the  sub- 
sequent stages  of  evolution.  The  purpose, 
then,  which  must  be  affirmed  is  not  exter- 
nally added  to  the  world,  but  is  already  im- 
plied in  the  very  existence  of  the  world.  The 
world  is  an  organic  whole,  in  which  each  part 
exists  and  has  its  proper  nature  only  in  and 
through  the  others.  Hence  the  evolution 
from  lower  to  higher  forms  is  not  a  matter 
of  accident,  but  is  inseparable  from  the  exist- 
ence of  the  world.  A  distinction,  however, 
must  be  drawn  between  different  orders  of 
being.  It  is  only  in  the  case  of  man  that  we 
can  speak  not  only  of   evolution,  but  of  con- 


IDEALISM  AND   CHRISTIANITY  20/ 

scious  evolution  or  progress.  The  scientific 
doctrine  of  evolution  has  enabled  us  to  see 
that  the  law  of  all  finite  forms  of  being  is  a 
law  of  development;  in  other  words,  that  the 
real  is  not  the  actual  as  it  first  appears  in 
time,  but  the  ideal  which  is  implicit  in  the 
actual,  and  which  is  present  in  it  as  the 
active  principle  determining  the  process  in 
which  it  is  manifested.  In  the  case  of  beings 
lower  than  man  this  process  does  not  reach 
the  stage  of  a  self-conscious  development ;  or, 
at  least,  even  the  highest  animals  have  only 
an  indefinite  consciousness  of  self,  and,  there- 
fore, can  hardly  be  said  to  be  capable  of 
ideals.  Man,  however,  not  only  develops, 
but  he  is  capable  of  grasping  the  law  of 
his  own  development,  and,  therefore,  of  con- 
trasting with  his  immediate  self  an  ideal  of 
himself  in  which  is  embodied  his  conception 
of  what  he  ought  to  be,  as  distinguished 
from  w^hat  he  is.  This  capability  of  return- 
ing upon  himself  and  setting  up  ideals  is 
the  fundamental  condition  of  human  progress. 
The  ideal,  however,  while  it  is  contrasted 
with   the   actual,  is    never   in   contradiction    to 


2o8  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

the  actual ;  it  is  but  the  actual  grasped  in  its 
ideal  nature,  as  that  end  towards  which  all 
prior  development  has  been  striving.  Were 
it  otherwise,  the  progress  of  man  would  be 
impossible.  It  is  thus  obvious  that,  on  the 
one  hand,  progress  consists  in  conformity  to 
the  purpose  which  is  involved  in  the  whole 
nature  of  things,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  this  purpose  can  be  realised  only  through 
the  free  activity  of  man.  The  spiritual  life 
of  man  cannot  be  imparted  to  him  from 
without;  it  consists  in  the  conscious  realisa- 
tion of  the  ideal.  It  is,  therefore,  a  very 
inadequate  conception  of  life  which  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  formula  that  there  is  a  "  Power 
not  ourselves  which  makes  for  righteousness." 
The  "  Power  "  which  makes  for  righteousness 
is  the  conscious  willing  of  righteousness,  i.e, 
the  conception  and  realisation  of  the  meaning 
of  the  world.  It  is  true  that  righteousness 
can  be  realised  only  because  it  is  the  true 
law  of  man's  being ;  but  it  is  a  law  which 
operates  only  in  and  through  his  self-con- 
scious life. 

It    is,    then,    the    very    nature    of    all    finite 


IDEALISM  AND   CHRISTIANITY  209 

forms  of  being  tliat  their  reality  consists  in 
a  process  by  which  tliey  come  to  be  what  in 
idea  they  are.  In  the  case  of  man,  whose 
development  is  a  self-conscious  process,  the 
development  of  goodness  consists  in  the  tran- 
scendence of  his  immediate  or  natural  life. 
So  far  as  the  life  of  man  is  merely  natural, 
he  is  neither  good  nor  evil ;  it  is  only  because 
he  is  capable  of  abstracting  from  the  imme- 
diate life  of  feeling  that  he  is  moral.  And 
with  this  capacity  is  bound  up  the  possi- 
bility of  willing  evil.  The  question  as  to  the 
existence  of  evil  has  been  obscured  by  the 
manner  in  which  the  problem  has  been  put. 
The  church  fathers,  conceiving  of  man  as 
independently  created,  maintained  that  he 
was  originally  perfect  in  wisdom  and  holi- 
ness, and  that  evil  was  introduced  into  the 
world  by  the  sin  of  the  first  man.  It  need 
hardly  be  said  that  this  explanation  not  only 
explains  nothing,  but  is  self-contradictory  and 
out  of  harmony  with  all  that  we  know^  of 
primitive  man.  It  explains  nothing,  because 
moral  evil  cannot  be  externally  transferred 
from  one  person  to  another ;    the  very  idea  of 


2IO  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

moral  evil  being  that  it  proceeds  from  a  free 
act.  It  is  self-contradictory,  because  a  perfect 
being  could  have  no  disposition  to  will  evil. 
And  it  is  incompatible  with  the  results  of 
scientific  discovery,  which  make  it  certain 
that  primitive  man  began  at  the  lowest  and 
not  the  highest  stage.  The  state  of  perfec- 
tion ascribed  to  primitive  man  is,  therefore, 
the  goal  and  not  the  starting-point  of  human- 
ity. Man  was,  therefore,  in  his  original  state 
evil,  in  the  sense  that  evil  is  inseparable  from 
the  life  of  a  being  who  can  attain  to  good 
only  through  freedom,  which  involves  the 
freedom  to  fall  into  error  and  evil.  The 
orio^inal  state  of  man  was  one  in  which  he 
had  the  most  inadequate  conception  of  the 
world,  himself,  and  God.  The  progress  of 
man  has  involved  a  continual  struggle  with 
the  cruder  ideal  of  an  earlier  age.  The  spir- 
itual life  is  not  a  primitive  endowment,  but 
the  result  of  long-continued  pain  and  travail. 
Evil  is  not  an  accident ;  it  is  inseparable  from 
the  process  by  which  man  transcends  his  im- 
mediate life.  It  is  only  through  the  ex- 
perience   of    evil    that    man    has    obtained    a 


IDEALISM  AND    CHRISTIANITY  211 

consciousness  of  the  depths  as  well  as  the 
heights  of  his  nature.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  process  of  human  life  has  been  a  contin- 
ual transcendence  of  evil.  The  desire  of  man 
is  for  goodness  and  God,  and  his  experience 
that  evil  is  in  contradiction  to  his  true  self 
makes  it  impossible  for  him  to  rest  in  it. 
Hence  even  at  the  earliest  stage  man  is 
never  absolutely  evil ;  he  hates  his  enemy, 
it  is  true,  but  he  sacrifices  his  natural  im- 
pulses, and  even  his  life,  for  his  family  or 
tribe.  Thus  the  imperfect  development  of 
his  moral  life  is  the  counterpart  of  his  im- 
perfect knowledge  of  himself. 

The  deliverance  of  man  from  the  evil  wdiich 
belongs  to  his  nature,  as  a  being  whose  life 
is  a  process,  is  possible  only  through  the 
comprehension  of  himself  as  in  his  ideal 
nature  identical  with  God.  The  mediaeval 
conception  of  salvation  cannot  be  accepted 
in  the  form  in  which  it  is  stated.  Man,  it 
was  argued,  might  conceivably  have  been 
liberated  from  sin  in  two  ways :  either  God 
might  have  pardoned  him  out  of  jDure  mercy, 
or    man    might    have    expiated    his    sin    by    a 


212  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

humility  correspondent  to  the  magnitude  of 
his  euilt.  But  the  former,  it  was  held,  con- 
flicts  with  the  justice  of  God;  and  the  latter 
is  impossible,  because  man  could  not  undergo 
a  humiliation  proportionate  to  the  self-asser- 
tion implied  in  disobedience  to  the  will  of 
God.  Hence  God  offered  up  his  Son  in 
man's  stead,  thus  reconciling  infinite  justice 
with  infinite  mercy. 

It  is  impossible  to  state  this  highly  arti- 
ficial doctrine  without  seeing  that  it  is  the 
product  of  conflicting  ideas  which  are  not 
properly  reconciled  with  each  other.  The 
starting-point  is  the  conception  of  personal 
sin,  one  of  the  central  ideas  of  Christianity. 
Sin  is  then  identified  with  crime,  and  there- 
fore God  is  conceived  as  an  inexorable  judge. 
But  sin  is  not  crime,  nor  can  God  be  re- 
garded as  a  judge.  Crime  is  a  violation  of 
the  personal  rights  of  another ;  it  is  an  offence 
against  the  external  order  of  the  state,  which 
must  be  expiated  by  an  external  punishment. 
Sin,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  a  violation  of 
rio^hts,  but  a  desecration  of  the  ideal  nature 
of  the  sinner,  the  willing  of  himself  as  in  his 


IDEALISM  AND    CHRfSTlANITY  213 

essence  he  is  not.  Hence  sin  requires  no 
external  punishment  to  bring  it  home  to  the 
sinner:  it  brings  its  own  punishment  with  it 
in  the  destruction  of  the  higher  life,  the  real- 
isation of  which  is  blessedness.  In  man,  by 
virtue  of  the  divine  principle  in  him,  the  con- 
sciousness of  God  is  bound  up  with  the  con- 
sciousness of  himself,  and  he  cannot  do  violence 
to  the  one  without  doing  violence  to  the  other. 
Hence  God  is  not  a  judge,  allotting  punish- 
ment according  to  an  external  law,  but  the 
perfectly  holy  Being,  by  reference  to  whom 
man  condemns  himself.  No  external  punish- 
ment can  transform  the  inner  nature.  The 
criminal,  after  undergoing  punishment,  may 
be  more  hardened  in  crime  than  ever,  and 
yet  society  must  punish  him,  because  its  func- 
tion is  to  preserve  the  social  bond,  which  by 
his  act  the  criminal  has  assailed.  But  reli- 
gion has  in  view  not  the  preservation  of  social 
order,  but  the  regeneration  of  the  individual  : 
it  deals  with  the  inner  nature  of  man,  not 
with  the  result  of  his  act  upon  society;  and 
hence,  unless  it  transforms  and  spiritualises 
him,  it  entirely  fails  of  its  end. 


214  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL   OF  LIFE 

The  sin  of  Adam,  according  to  the  mediae- 
val theory,  consisted  in  pride,  or  the  attempt 
to  equalise  himself  with  God.  The  truth  im- 
plied in  this  view  is  that  in  so  far  as  man 
seeks  to  realise  his  true  self  in  separation 
from  God,  and  therefore  in  willing  his  own 
good  in  isolation  from  the  good  of  his  fellow- 
men,  he  brings  upon  himself  spiritual  death. 
But  this  truth  is  obscured  by  the  vulgar 
notion  that  sin  is  the  attempt  of  man  to 
equalise  himself  with  God,  —  a  notion  obvi- 
ously based  upon  the  conception  of  God  as 
a  Ruler  whose  majesty  must  be  asserted. 
This  pagan  conception,  drawn  mainly  from 
the  idea  of  Caesar,  as  the  representative  of 
order  and  law,  is  entirely  foreign  to  the  Chris- 
tian idea  of  God.  Even  Plato  saw  that  "in 
God  there  can  be  no  envy ; "  and  mediaeval 
thinkers  themselves  virtually  deny  this  false 
conception  of  God,  when  they  speak  of  the 
incarnation  as  an  expression  of  the  infinite 
love  of  God.  Here,  in  fact,  we  come  upon 
the  only  purely  Christian  idea  in  the  whole 
doctrine.  Stripped  of  its  artificial  form,  what 
is    afifirmed   is    that    it   is    the    very  nature    of 


TDEAUSM  AND   CHRIST/ AN/TV  215 

God  to  communicate  himself  to  finite  beinors ; 
that,  loving  his  creatures  with  an  infinite  love, 
he  can  realise  his  own  blessedness  only  in 
them.  Man  can  therefore  be  saved  from  sin 
only  as  he  realises  in  his  own  life  the  self- 
communicating  spirit  of  God.  In  taking  upon 
himself  the  burden  of  the  race,  he  lives  a 
divine  life.  This  is  the  secret  which  Jesus 
reahsed  in  his  life,  and  to  have  made  this 
secret  practically  our  own  is  to  be  justified 
by  faith. 

The  Christian  ideal  of  life,  as  here  under- 
stood, is  broad  enough  to  embrace  all  the 
elements  which  in  their  combination  consti- 
tute the  complex  spirit  of  the  modern  world. 
Every  advance  in  science  is  the  preparation 
for  a  fuller  and  clearer  conception  of  God ; 
every  improvement  in  the  organisation  of 
society  is  a  further  development  of  that  com- 
munity of  free  beings  by  which  the  ideal  of 
an  organic  unity  of  humanity  is  in  process 
of  realisation;  every  advance  in  the  artistic 
interpretation  of  the  world  helps  to  individu- 
alise the  idea  of  the  organic  unity  by  which 
all  things  are  bound  together.     The    ideal   of 


2l6  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL    OF  LIFE 

the  Church  has  tended  to  Hmit  Christianity 
to  the  direct  promotion  of  the  moral  ideal, 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  more  comprehensive 
ideal  which  recognises  that  the  goal  is  the 
full  development  of  all  the  means  by  which 
the  full  perfection  of  humanity  is  realised. 
The  Christian  ideal,  as  embodied  in  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus,  was  free  from  this  limitation.  It 
saw  God  in  the  orderly  processes  of  nature 
and  in  the  beauty  of  the  world,  as  well  as  in 
the  loving  service  of  humanity.  In  principle 
it  therefore  embraced  all  that  makes  for  the 
higher  life.  The  Christianity  of  our  day 
must  free  itself  from  the  narrow  conception 
of  life  by  which  Protestantism  has  tended  to 
limit  its  principle.  It  must  recognise  that 
the  ideal  of  Christian  manhood  includes 
within  it  the  Greek  ideal  of  clear  thought 
and  the  love  of  beauty,  as  well  as  the  Jewish 
ideal  of  righteousness,  and  the  Roman  ideal 
of  law  and  order,  harmonising  all  by  the 
divine  spirit  of  love  to  God  and  man,  on  the 
basis  of  that  free  spirit  which  has  come  to 
us  mainly  from  our  Teutonic  ancestors. 


OUTLINES  OF  SOCIAL  THEOLOGY. 

By  WILLIAM  DEWITT   HYDE,   D.D., 

President  of  Bowdoin  College, 

i2mo.     Cloth,     Price  $1.50. 

"It  is  a  most  thoughtful,  wholesome,  and  stimulating  book.  It  is 
suggestive  and  thought-provoking,  rather  than  exhaustive,  and  that  is  a 
merit  of  only  good  books."  —  Evangelical  Messenger. 

"Altogether  it  is  a  book  for  the  times  —  fresh,  vigorous,  intelligent, 
broad,  and  brave,  and  one  that  will  be  welcomed  by  thinking  people." — 
Christian  Guide. 

"  President  Hyde  does  not  aim  to  upset  established  religion,  only  to 
point  out  how  the  article  we  now  have  may  be  improved  on  its  social 
side,  as  to  which  there  will  be  no  dispute  that  it  is  wofully  lacking,  tlis 
argument  is  sound  and  sensible,  and  his  book  DESERVES  TO  BE  WIDELY 
READ."  — Phila.  Evening  Bulletin. 


HEREDITY    AND    CHRISTIAN 
PROBLEMS. 

By  AMORY  H.   BRADFORD,  D.D. 

i2mo.    Cloth.    Price  $1.50. 

"  It  is  a  most  timely  corrective  to  the  drift  of  popular  exaggeration, 
and  it  is  a  most  clear  and  forcible  presentation  of  many  widely  misun- 
derstood truths."  —  From  a  letter  to  the  Author  from  Bishop  Potter. 

"  A  popular  and  instructive  discussion  of  the  vexed  question  of  her- 
edity. .  .  .  Dr.  Bradford  discusses  it  in  a  robust,  intelligent,  straightfor- 
ward, and  thoroughly  Christian  way,  and  his  book  will  be  a  solid  help  to 
every  student  of  human  nature." —  The  Christian  Advocate. 

"  The  really  fine  and  characteristic  feature  in  the  scheme  of  reform 
presented  by  Dr.  Bradford  is  his  faith  in  Christianity  as  a  divine  and 
spiritual  power  in  the  world,  set  to  operate  along  the  lines  of  certam 
intelligent  methods." —  7he  Independent. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

66   FIFTH   AVENUE,    NEW   YORK. 


Date  Due 

^r  27  ^ 

!^i  n  II  ^ 

1 

^^ 

^ 

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